


Dear Friend

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 117,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...Loosely inspired by the movie <i>The Shop Around the Corner</i>. </p><p>This fic was written during the hiatus between seasons 3 and 4, so a lot of details have since been canon-balled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“There’s a letter for you on the counter,” Ben’s mother informs him when he gets home after one of the worst days on record. Thank god school is out in less than two weeks. Or not, because his mother is sitting at the kitchen table, going through yet another stack of paint chips and wallpaper samples, and seriously, why are they remodeling the house this summer? “Don’t track mud in the kitchen.”

His shoes are already off, cast aside on the throw rug that can’t quite hide all the deep claw marks in the underlying linoleum. “A letter? From who?” he asks, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl and biting into it. No one writes to him.

“Your camp pen pal, I think.” She holds up a strip of yellows. “What about this one on the top, then a chair rail, and that flowered wallpaper on the lower half?” She holds them up against the wall.

Ben doesn’t know what a chair rail is, but even if he did, he probably wouldn’t think the kitchen needed one. “What’s wrong with the way everything is now?” he asks for probably the twentieth time this month. He _likes_ the cream and red plaid wallpaper, even if it is a little faded and dingy; it’s the way the kitchen’s always been. There’s no reason to change everything in the kitchen all of a sudden. They haven’t even moved Chewy’s leash and dish from the attached mud room, even though he died in February, and everyone’s been okay with that.

His mother sighs, pulls off her reading glasses. “Do you have homework?”

“Not much.” School ends in two weeks, so homework is basically nonexistent at this point.

“Try to get it done before dinner,” she says, though they both know she doesn’t need to; Ben’s homework is always done before dinner. “How was school today, anyway?”

“Fine,” he lies, heading upstairs to his room, envelope in hand.

School had _not_ been fine. Well, his actual classes were fine, no problems there. He’d always been a good student. But _other_ things had happened during school that were definitely not fine at all. Like turning a corner in the library and coming across his best friend, Steve, kissing Cindy Eckert behind the encyclopedias, her long dark hair trailing over the shelves.

Well, at least now he could spend the eighth-grade graduation dance sitting on the bleachers in the gym without beating himself up for not being brave enough to ask her to dance, or (in the event that he would have managed to work up the courage) being rejected by her. Now the dance would just be four hours of boredom, plus the hour of setup and the hour of cleanup that he knew he’d be unable to escape—one, because his father is chaperoning, and two, because he’s student body vice-president and therefore is automatically volunteered to help with all school events.

Cindy, of course, is the student body president, and Steve is the treasurer. That had made today’s after-school student body meeting extremely…extremely not fun at all, especially after everyone had just sort of assumed that Ben was going to be in charge of putting up all the decorations for the graduation dance, and he’d somehow agreed to do it without knowing exactly why, except that it had been Cindy’s idea.

Ben is pretty sure he’s done about three times the work that Cindy has over the course of this year. In all fairness, he has at least twice as many ideas as she does, and he’s pretty efficient in actually putting them into practice. Plus, most of Cindy’s suggestions have to do with school social events, and Ben’s all have to do with extracurricular activities and recycling programs and actually running the student government. So they’ve actually made a pretty good team, all things considered. And then he finds himself automatically wanting to help with (or just flat-out _do_ ) nearly everything she suggests, somehow.

Apparently she isn’t going to be suggesting that he kiss her behind the encyclopedias anytime soon.  
Because this clearly wasn’t the first time she’d been back there with Steve. The kissing was bad enough; Ben really doesn’t want to think about Steve’s right hand going under Cindy’s shirt and right…up…there.

He suspects that Cindy might have caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, although that might just be paranoia on his part. She had been very busy.

He might need a new plan for the dance.

There are other girls at Partridge Middle School, of course there are, but Ben doesn’t see much of a point in trying to go after someone he doesn’t like, even if it might (how, he has no idea) prove something (what, he has no idea) to Cindy. He’s heard a rumor that someone has a crush on him, but no one seems to know who the girl is, so the rumor is probably just that and the girl doesn’t actually exist. Or it’s one of the sixth graders, who are always developing crushes on eighth grade boys just because they’re older, which is really about the same thing as the girl being imaginary.

So, six hours that would definitely be more productively spent watching all three _Star Wars_ movies for the millionth time, or sneaking out to the baseball field for a game of catch, or even reading the newspaper, even though the _Partridge Daily Journal_ only takes twenty minutes to read, on average. Really, those six hours would be better spent doing anything other than putting on decent clothes and trying to pretend that being stuck at the school dance is not the most miserable thing that could happen to a fourteen-year-old going through what his mother is charitably describing as an “awkward phase.” She always says it with a sort of smile, like he’s supposed to take solace in the fact that at least his mother still thinks he’s cute, even though she’s his mother and she sort of has to think that no matter what.

God, it had better just be a phase. And it better have ended by fall, because Ben really doesn’t want to start high school with braces (they’re _supposed_ to come off at the end of August, but he’s not convinced they will) and these terrible glasses (“We promised you contacts in high school and not a minute before. You’re not going to camp with contacts, they’ll just get lost,” his mother keeps reiterating, like he’s ever lost anything important in his life, which he hasn’t). There’s also his charming inability to walk anywhere without tripping over his own feet (they really shouldn’t be this big, should they?) and, most alarmingly, this recent tendency towards growing _out_ instead of _up_. The pediatrician had declared all of…this…evidence of an impending growth spurt when his mother had dragged him in for the required pre-summer-camp physical exam and tetanus booster, and god, Ben hopes so, because right now he looks like a chipmunk. A short chipmunk. With acne. He has some sort of prescription cream for _that_ now, which stings when he puts it on, and he finds the existence of prescription acne cream in his bathroom horribly embarrassing even if no one knows that he has it.

So, new plan for the dance: pretend not to be miserable for six hours. It is shaping up to be an absolutely fantastic summer, Ben thinks.

Really, the idea of being dumped at summer camp in the middle of Indiana for eight weeks, where he will know absolutely no one except his little sister (who hardly counts, in this case), is not at all appealing. He thinks he might be too old for summer camp. Or, if he has to go to one, it should be cool. Like space camp, or baseball camp, or the math camp in Minneapolis that he usually goes to.

But math camp and baseball camp are short term, and this summer, there’s going to be extensive remodeling done on the entire Wyatt house, not just the kitchen. It’s older, and apparently all the bathrooms have to have their plumbing replaced after the pipes froze last winter, and his parents have decided they might as well do everything all at once. And _that_ will be easier if he and Jess are gone for the summer.

“Why do I have to go to this camp again?” he yells down the stairs, trying to make himself heard over Jess’s _Little Mermaid_ soundtrack.

“Because all the pipes are being ripped out of the house, they’re estimating two months to fix it, and the four of us are not going to live with only the half bath in the basement for two months,” his mother calls. “Stop yelling. Come downstairs if you want to have this argument again.”

He clomps back downstairs, pokes his head in the kitchen. “But why _this_ camp?”

She sighs, glares at him in mock anger, counts on her fingers. “Benjamin Wyatt, we have had this discussion more times than I have manual digits. Your cousin Richie went there a few years ago. He liked it. It’ll be useful. You can get a first aid certification.”

“I don’t need a first aid certification.”

“You never know,” she says. “Also, I don’t want you and Jessica here when they rip out the walls. This house is old, god knows how much lead or asbestos or whatever might be in them. And finally,” she continues, holding up her index finger to silence his as-yet unspoken protest, “we already paid for it. So you’re going, buster, like it or not.”

“I don’t,” Ben mutters, going back upstairs.

“And when you come back,” his mother calls after him, “you’re going to have new carpet in your bedroom and you’re going to be _happy_ about it.”

“I won’t!” he yells over that stupid romantic crab song.

There is _nothing_ wrong with the carpet he already has, thank you very much. He slams his bedroom door closed, more because he feels like it’s expected than because he’s actually angry.

Cousin Richie actually lives in Indiana, and had a couple of friends going to camp with him. It’s not like Ben’s shy or anything, it’s just that he doesn’t quite relish the idea of spending eight weeks hundreds of miles from home, with total strangers.

Then the image of Steve kissing Cindy Eckert flashes into his mind again. Jessica’s cassette tape is really, really not helping him here.

Maybe getting the hell out of Partridge for the summer is a good idea after all, even if it’s to a summer camp that thinks its campers need to be _pen pals_.

He throws his backpack in the corner of his bedroom and contemplates the letter. Ben got his pen pal assignment last week, but finishing his social studies paper had been more important (followed by everything else he could think of being more important) so the envelope from camp is still crammed in the back of his desk drawer, unopened.

Obviously his pen pal, whoever that is, does not have the same level of commitment to homework, because the envelope he’s holding is really thick. He checks the return address. Pawnee, Indiana. He’s never heard of that town. There’s no name above the return address. It looks like an adult’s handwriting. Is his pen pal forty? That would figure.

Algebra homework, or letter?

Typically, homework comes first, but both Cindy and Steve are in his math class, and suddenly algebra seems really unappealing. He switches on his radio (the Twins are playing a day game today), flops down on his bed, and opens the letter.

For some reason, Ben had assumed that the camp would assign him a male pen pal. Like a potential bunkmate or something. Instead, he’s looking at what is unmistakably a girl’s handwriting, different than the handwriting on the envelope, covering the front and back sides of seven pages of Lisa Frank penguin stationery.

The letter begins “Dear Friend.”

Good lord.

_Dear Friend,_

_Or, soon to be friend! I hope you don’t mind that I’m not calling you by name. It’s just that I love mysteries a lot—one of my life’s ambitions is to solve one on a train—and I think it would be fun if we exchange letters mysteriously, without knowing who the other person is. So I hope that’s okay. We’ll figure out the mystery the minute we get to camp anyway, I bet. The last couple of years, my pen pals have ended up in my cabin. Of course, you’ve probably already looked at my name on that thing that the camp sent you, but even if you have, could you maybe pretend that you haven’t? I actually really wanted to go to spy camp this summer, but my mom said those don’t exist. She addressed this letter for me, by the way._

_Anyway, I did read the list of questions that the camp suggested we ask each other, so I’m going to answer all of them for you. (Except the one about my name, of course.) Then you can do the same for me. I just turned fourteen, and I’m finishing eighth grade in Pawnee, which is the best town in Indiana and probably the United States. I didn’t look to see where you live, either, and I won’t look at the envelope when you write back. I’ll have my mom open it for me or something. Okay, the questions…_

The questions are, thank god, pretty boring, ranging from favorite food and color (“waffles” and “all of them, except olive green,” respectively) to pets (“I don’t have any, but I love cats and dogs and penguins and miniature horses…but I hate raccoons. Turtles are okay I guess”), to favorite school subject (“history and civics”) then goes into what Ben assumes are the leadership-camp specific questions, like favorite historical figure (“a tie between Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony”) and career goals (“first female president of the United States”). And that’s all that’s in the rest of her letter, just a list of questions and answers. (Most of the questions have more than one answer, in fact.) There’s a brief concluding paragraph that he’s pretty sure is lifted straight from some school assignment on how to write letters because it’s oddly formal, and the whole thing ends with “Sincerely, your mysterious friend” and, incongruously, a smiley face.

Ben stares at the letter for an entire half-inning, turning the pages over and over. He has literally no idea what kind of reply is appropriate here. Is this girl completely nuts? The good thing is, he supposes, trying to make some sense of it, she seems to like most things. And since he’s neither a raccoon nor olive green, there’s a decent enough chance that she might not hate him if he plays along with this silly mystery game.

It would be nice to arrive at camp and know that at least _one_ person (other than Jess, who doesn’t count) doesn’t hate him.

So he pulls some loose-leaf notebook paper out of his Trapper Keeper, spreads her seven pages across the top of his desk, and tries to think of where to start.

 _Dear Friend,_ he writes (yeah, he’s never going to live that one down if anyone from school finds out, but how would they?)…

And then what? Okay, he’ll just start with some general pleasantries, then answer all the questions. In fewer than seven pages, if he can swing it.

_Dear Friend,_

_Believe it or not, I did not open the letter from camp yet, and now I won’t, so everything is still mysterious. We can stay that way if that’s what you want to do, although I don’t read mysteries (I prefer science fiction) so I don’t really know how that works in practice. But it could be fun to stay anonymous. Is there something else I should be saying here? Penguins are cute, and…here are my answers to the questions._

_Favorite color: blue. Favorite food: calzones, I guess? Pets: I used to have a dog, but he died this winter. We might get another one after the summer is over. My favorite subjects are math and history…_

There’s something a little unsettling about writing down the answers here, like whatever he puts on the notebook paper is actually going to define him to this mysterious girl in Indiana—that she’s going to judge all his answers and find him deficient in some way. Ben has no idea if real teenage girls are like the ones in movies and on TV, but he can’t help envisioning some sort of slumber party, where his pen pal and her friends (he imagines, somehow, that she’s really popular even if she is nuts) read over his letter and giggle about how stupid he must be. Did he really just write that penguins were cute? Maybe he should cross out that part. Maybe he should actually spell out that he’s not a girl.

Well, if she’s going to ask him to stay mysterious, he ought to be able to ask her to do the same, right? In any case, the minute they meet in person, she’ll be able to figure out exactly how nerdy he is. Well, no, she’ll already have figured that out from his answers to the questions, so he’s screwed either way. Still.

 _P.S._ , he adds to the end of the letter. _If we’re going to be like spies, that means you won’t share this letter with anyone else, right? I hope not._

Right. That should do it.

No, wait.

_P.P.S. Why do you hate raccoons?_

He folds up his three pages of notebook paper, stuffs them in an envelope, and copies her address from the torn envelope she’d sent him. Writes down his own address in the corner with no name, and directs the letter to “Mysterious Pen Pal,” hoping that the post office will still deliver it.

The Twins lose the game, but Ben does get his algebra homework done before dinner.

School is really no better for the rest of the week. He’s run across three more of his friends (well, it’s a small enough school that everybody is pretty much friends with everybody else) making out with girls in the library, which is making him start to hate the library. And on Friday, Steve announces that he’s taking Cindy to the dance, and that if Ben is having a hard time finding a date, Cindy might be able to talk one of her friends into going with him.

They’re doing that already? Ben was under the distinct impression that he wasn’t going to have to worry about asking girls to dances until, like, junior prom.

Also, the Twins are in the middle of a losing streak, his acne cream hasn’t done a damn thing yet, and his mother is now insisting that he choose fabric for his new bedroom curtains. That one they actually have an argument about, Ben’s position wavering between “What’s wrong with the curtains I have now” and “I don’t care what the new curtains look like,” until his mother counters with the threat that fine, he’ll just get curtains to match Jessica’s, and hands him the relevant fabric sample. Jess has picked out a lavender fabric with a sort of paint smear design in yellow and pink. She also finds the threat hilarious, and spends the next two days teasing him about wanting girls’ curtains, which is really not helping his mood.

Eventually he just flips through the fabric samples and picks the first one that doesn’t seem too horrible, a dark red plaid that kind of reminds him of the kitchen wallpaper. His mother holds it up against his posters, declares with a mock sigh that it matches Kirby Puckett and doesn’t clash too badly with _Return of the Jedi_.

“You’re not going to make me get new posters, too?” he says snarkily, hoping he’s not going too far. (Damn it, he’s a teenage boy and there’s something about waking up to Princess Leia in her gold bikini that he doesn’t quite want to let go of.)

In response, his mother rumples his hair and kisses the top of his head (which she can still reach easily—where _is_ that promised growth spurt?), then says something about a shopping trip for camp supplies and a nicer shirt for the dance, which…yeah, he still can’t think about the dance without seeing Steve kissing Cindy Eckert, especially after Cindy shows up at their usual Friday night video game party and kicks everyone’s ass at Super Mario 3 while sort of, kind of, sitting vaguely near enough to Steve that he can pretend to accidentally touch her a lot. Then she shows up again to baseball practice on Saturday, wearing impossibly tiny shorts, her glossy dark hair even…glossier.

That’s it. Ben hates girls now. All of them. Except Jessica who, being both ten years old and his sister, doesn’t really count.

His new resolve to hate all girls lasts until Saturday morning, when the mailman hands him a second letter from his mysterious pen pal. This one is only six pages, but on Pawnee municipal government letterhead, which actually strikes him as funnier than the penguin stationery—like she wants him to think she’s more mature or something. He unfolds it, determined to stay in his week-long bad mood.

_Dear Friend,_

_First, I want to apologize for assuming that you were a girl—I’ve been going to this camp for three years now and my pen pals have always been girls before, but I guess there’s no reason to think they only assign pen pals to corresponding genders. Anyway, your handwriting clued me in and then my mom looked at the paper and confirmed it, so I thought you might appreciate not having to see my penguins, even though you’re right, they are so cute. Or were you just saying that to be nice? I’m also sorry about your dog. I’ve never had a pet, but I guess I already told you that._

_I don’t know what to write here, really. Mom sent me to my room to do homework, even though I already did all of it (you know, end of school year and all), which either means that she and my dad are going to have another fight (they’re divorced, so he’s not really here, but they argue over the phone a lot) or that she’s having a “man friend” over for dinner, which is gross. She thinks I don’t know what’s going on, but I do. But that’s not really important._

_It’s hard to write a mysterious letter without giving away too many personal details, isn’t it? I know, I’ll tell you about why I don’t like raccoons. No one here does, they’re awful and there are SO MANY of them. You said you liked baseball—this is also a baseball story. Do you play or just watch? It’s not my favorite sport, but I’m planning to go to all the games next year when I get to high school. Our team is usually really good, plus I like to show school spirit. Anyway, I guess if you do live in Indiana you might have heard about this already, but the media coverage was definitely misguided. It’s always better to have an insider’s perspective on local current events, don’t you think?_

_Okay, so this all started last summer when Pawnee hosted the Indiana State Little League tournament…_

The story that follows is genuinely hilarious—who ever heard of packs of raccoons invading all of a town’s baseball fields?—and Ben finds himself laughing, actually laughing, for what seems like the first time all week. More than just the story itself, his mysterious pen pal has written the whole saga really well, like she’s actually put some thought into how best to tell him this story that cannot possibly be true. She’s maybe even written multiple drafts; the whole thing is flawless, no scratch-outs or eraser marks or misspellings. He can’t help but be impressed by how much _effort_ she’s putting into this mysterious pen pal thing.

Folded into the last page of the letter is a newspaper clipping, a short article about the incident (oh wow, she didn’t make it up after all) that is nowhere near as entertaining as this girl’s account, with an accompanying picture of a Little Leaguer flat on his face on the pitcher’s mound, a raccoon running off with his hat. In the background, a coach is running onto the field, brandishing an aluminum bat and yelling while a second raccoon bites his ankles. It’s the best picture he’s ever seen in a newspaper, certainly better than anything he’s ever seen in the _Partridge Daily Journal_ , which pretty much only puts in the effort to make sure its headlines rhyme whenever possible.

Ben does not remember anything like this ever happening in Partridge, or even near his cousin Richie in Muncie. He resolves to brave the library on Monday so that he can look up Pawnee in the atlas, despite the fact that the atlas is near the encyclopedias, and hope fervently that this summer camp is sufficiently far away that he won’t have to worry about getting mauled by raccoons while he’s there.

Now what the hell is he supposed to write to her in response?

***

“You got another letter from your little pen friend,” says Marlene, as Leslie climbs into the car and buckles her seatbelt.

She looks around, eagerly. “Where is it?”

“It’s at home, sweetheart. You know I don’t like you reading in the car, you’ll get sick.” Instead, Marlene hands her a Sweetums granola bar.

“I know,” says Leslie grumpily, unwrapping the granola bar and wishing, for the millionth time, that her mother would buy the chocolate chip ones instead of oatmeal raisin. Although she is always grateful for the post-school sugar rush.

“How was school?”

“Fine. Boring.” She turns toward the window, makes a face at the granola bar that her mother can’t see.

“Only boring people are bored, Leslie,” says Marlene, pointedly. Leslie’s heard the expression so many times, she mouths along without thinking about it.

“Mom, it’s the last week. We’re not actually doing anything except handing in final projects and talking about them.” This means that Leslie has nothing to do. She’d handed in her projects a week early, of course. The last week of school is always her least favorite week of the year—there’s no homework and not much going on in classes (she is always dismayed by the lack of effort that her classmates put into their projects, which somehow still get praised). But she still has to actually go to school, which means she can’t start her summer activities list, either. There are only two weeks between the end of school and the start of camp, so she definitely needs to get started on her list as soon as possible. That fence around the flowerbeds at Ramsett Park is not going to repaint itself, after all. The donated paint in her garage is practically screaming at her. Plus, she has to renew her junior gun safety certification, purchase and organize her school supplies for next year, and learn to embroider.

And anything— _anything_ —would be better than spending another boring school day listening to boring Lindsay, her suddenly boring best friend, talk about boring boys. Okay, not that all boys are boring, but the ones Lindsay likes certainly are—jocks, or the preppy kids that live close to the Eagleton border and consequently think they’re better than anyone, or anyone else who’s popular and cool for reasons that Leslie absolutely cannot comprehend, because they don’t seem to _do_ anything. Not that Leslie has anything against boys, there are several boys she likes _as people_ , but the obsession with trying to get them to _like you_ in _that way_? Yeah, that just seems like a waste of her time.

She’s seen Lindsay slowly trying to turn into one of _them_ —one of the popular kids—and it’s killing her. Thank god Lindsay is coming to leadership camp with her, so she’ll have all summer to get Lindsay back to normal. Plus (Leslie perks up every time she thinks of this) her bunkmate from the last two summers, Ann, is going to be at camp too. Lindsay and Ann have only met once, at Leslie’s last birthday party (Ann lives on the raccoon side of Pawnee, so she goes to the other middle school), and Leslie’s not sure they spoke to each other much, but she just knows that the three of them are going to be inseparable for the entire summer, like the Three Musketeers, and Lindsay will forget all about stupid Mark Brendanawicz and how tall and handsome he is. Which, okay, Leslie supposes that he is objectively both those things, but she's also pretty sure he’s a chauvinist. He’s definitely always staring at girls’ butts in the hallways.

She really needs to get started on learning embroidery right away, so that she can make them “Three Musketeers” t-shirts. Maybe the shirts should say something funnier, like a clever in-joke. Mousketeers? No, Lindsay hates mice. She’ll have to think about it some more.

But first, she wants to read her mysterious letter. She still has some doubts about this boy (no one in their right mind would list calzones as a favorite food, after all) but he had agreed to play along with her spy game, and that makes her a little giddy. She knows the idea is silly, but Leslie is secretly terrified that Pawnee High will not be as wonderful as she’s always imagined that it will be—she’ll have so many more chances to succeed, but just as many chances for failure. High school is going to matter in a way that middle school doesn’t, and this is her _future_ here, and what if she screws it up and can’t get into a decent college? She’ll never be elected anything then, let alone president. So there’s a part of her (well hidden from her mother) that desperately wants to hang on to being able to do fun and ridiculous things, and if she can do that by persuading some boy she’s never met to exchange anonymous letters, so much the better.

Also, she’s pretty sure that, given the number of times his first letter mentioned math and Star Wars, he will not be a roadblock in her plan to make Lindsay stop caring about boys even if he does turn out to be cute. Which, given the number of times his first letter mentioned math and Star Wars, he probably isn’t.

His letter is on her bed, a big Pawnee School Board sticker over the return address. “Thanks, Mom!” Leslie yells down the stairs, before she flops into her beanbag chair to read the letter.

_Dear Friend,_

_So, I know you said you wanted to be the president, but maybe you should think about being a writer, too, because your raccoon story (which I had never heard) was the best thing I’ve read in a really long time. I actually thought you had made it up until I got to the newspaper clipping. That photo is amazing. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at a raccoon the same way again. There are some near where I live, but not nearly enough to disrupt a Little League tournament. We have a bigger problem with deer._

_Anyway. Yes, I do play baseball, mostly second base but I’d rather play shortstop. In fact, I tried to talk my parents into sending me to baseball camp this summer instead of this camp (no offense intended) but obviously, I failed at that. The reason I failed is because baseball camp only lasts for three weeks, and my parents are planning to remodel the entire house this summer…_

Leslie would never have thought that she could be entertained by a story about a stranger’s house being remodeled, but she has to giggle at her pen pal’s descriptions of his mother’s endless supply of paint chips (“I honestly can’t tell the difference between Sunrise Orange and Chutney Orange—also, what’s chutney?”) and his little sister’s insistence that they make over the bathroom he shares with her to look like Ariel’s grotto (“she wants to put a music box in the toilet so that ‘Under the Sea’ plays every time we flush, so obviously I won’t be able to invite any friends over for the rest of my life”). And the last part…well, the last part actually makes her tear up a little:

_My dog, Chewy, died a couple of months ago—I think I mentioned that—and it’s like we’re all expecting him to come running through the dog door in the kitchen any minute. No one’s put his bowl away, and his tennis balls are still all over the back yard. But after the remodel, I’m afraid it’ll be like he never even existed—I think my dad wants to put a new door in the kitchen, says we lose too much heat through the dog door in the wintertime. And they’re definitely replacing the kitchen floor. Yeah, it would be nicer if we had linoleum without toenail scratches, but they’re **his** toenail scratches, you know? Sometimes the scratches are better. But I think Mom would think I was crazy if I asked to keep an old piece of linoleum, so I guess it’ll just be gone when I get back. _

She does know. Leslie hardly ever misses her father, but that is exactly how she felt for months after he left, after her mother had torn through the house and made every physical artifact vanish, right down to the framed family portraits from Sears that had hung in the stairwell, which had been replaced with very generic wildlife prints. Like her mother was sending a message that he simply didn’t exist anymore. It’s not exactly the same, a dead dog versus an absent-but-alive father, but she gets it.

There’s some more to the letter, a casual mention of the upcoming end-of-year dance that he’s not looking forward to for reasons that he doesn’t mention, and a friendly sign-off. But she keeps going back to the middle parts of his story, to where he’s actually made a bathroom funny and a kitchen kind of heartbreaking. She reads those parts over and over, wondering where he lives. Clearly nowhere near Pawnee, if he doesn’t have a raccoon problem.

Plus, the letter is smart and funny and punctuated correctly (Leslie loves that) and obviously something he worked on for a good long while. Something he worked on _for her_ , since she assumes he still doesn’t want her to share anything he writes with anyone else.

So she writes him a letter about watching a local artist paint a mural on the second floor of City Hall when she was eight, how she’s pretty sure her mother paid the artist to watch her during school board meetings because her father had just left, but that she doesn’t care because she’d been allowed to help paint the bottom row of wildflowers. And even though no one ever looks at the bottom row of wildflowers, there’s a bench in front of them, Leslie still loves knowing that she contributed something, however tiny, to her town.

A few days later, she gets a response describing how and why his school library is now the worst place in the world. He’s written it disarmingly, like it’s supposed to be funny (and it would be if she weren’t in such agreement about libraries being awful), but she can tell there’s a tiny bit of bitterness behind the humor.

And even though Leslie normally wants to share everything with both Lindsay and Ann (the beauty of having two best friends who don’t know each other is that you get to share everything twice), these letters are things that she absolutely wants to keep private. So when Lindsay calls to talk about Mark some more, and Leslie eventually steers the conversation towards camp, she flat-out lies to Lindsay, tells her that she accidentally got assigned a stupid boy as a pen pal and he wrote her a dumb letter and she hopes she never has to meet him. And then Ann calls the weekend before camp, to try to convince Leslie that she should sign up for a first aid training course that the camp is offering (of course Leslie signed up for it weeks ago). The subject of meeting their pen pals comes up again, of course. And Leslie lies again, tells Ann the same thing she told Lindsay. It’s not easy either time, but she does it.

Oh god, Leslie realizes after she hangs up with Ann. She barely even cares that she just lied to her two best friends about a _boy._

So _this_ is what a crush feels like.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

 

The Partridge Middle School eighth-grade graduation ceremony takes place Saturday morning, with an ice cream social at noon and the dance later that evening. Having survived an epic, truly awful shopping trip earlier in the week, Ben puts on his new button-down shirt and even grudgingly agrees to tuck it into his new pants, after his mother threatens to mail copies of the naked baby pictures that Ben likes to pretend don’t exist to his camp pen pal if he doesn’t. He poses for pictures in front of the fireplace and tries to look happy, even though he won’t be until after his valedictory address is over, and then only if he manages not to screw it up.

He nails it. Like, spectacularly nails it. His voice doesn’t even suddenly change registers or anything.

Even Cindy (whose student council speech was pretty good, too) looks a little impressed, not that he was trying to impress her or anything, and she applauds nearly as loudly as Jess does. His parents are both appropriately teary-eyed afterwards, and when the whole ceremony is over and they’ve moved onto the ice cream social, it’s not too embarrassing when they hug him in front of everybody. Well, at least it’s not _weird_ , since all the parents are hugging their children in front of everybody, and at least half of the parents are crying.

Eventually, Cindy comes over and punches him on the arm.

“Nice speech,” she says, grinning. “You’re coming with us for calzones, right?” She tilts her head towards Steve and the rest of their group, which has somehow accumulated a whole pack of girls, too. At exactly what point did his friends become so popular?

“Yeah, of course,” Ben says, rubbing his arm (Cindy punches surprisingly hard) and glancing at his mom for permission.

“Hi, Cindy,” says his mom, whipping out the camera again. “Good job today. Pictures before you go!” She waves them closer together.

“ _Mom,_ ” Ben groans, but Cindy is already chirping “Thanks, Mrs. Wyatt!” and before Ben has time to react, her arm is around his waist and she’s flipping her hair back for the camera.

So he throws his own arm around her shoulders and tries to smile, like it’s not at all weird to be standing this close to Cindy Eckert or for her arm to be around him, and hopes that he’ll never have to see these pictures. Actually, he hopes that no one will ever have to see these pictures. “ _Parents_ ,” whispers Cindy conspiratorially, leaning into him. “My mom’s gone through, like, four rolls of film today.”

And sure enough, Mrs. Eckert is suddenly there with her own camera, snapping away. Damn it. Now someone is definitely going to see these pictures. _Cindy_ is going to see them.

“Yeah,” Ben whispers back. “What are they going to be like when we graduate from high school?”

“Intolerable,” she replies, fluffing her hair with her free arm. It smells like vanilla. Or maybe that’s her lip gloss. Either way, he’s having a hard time not sniffing harder.

He extracts his arm the instant the lens caps go back on, and Cindy immediately yells a goodbye and runs over to the group.

“Have fun,” says his mom, handing him a couple of five-dollar bills. He’s about to walk away when she suddenly hugs him again.

“Mom, seriously,” he mutters, bracing himself for the inevitable hair rumple. But it doesn’t come. Instead, she just sighs.

“You’re just growing up so _fast,_ ” she says.

“I’m really not.”

Oh, there’s the hair rumple.

“Stop being so literal,” she says. She looks over at the group, narrows her eyes a little. “Cindy certainly got pretty this year.”

He doesn’t say anything, just tries to flatten his hair back down. “I’m waiting for a reaction here, kiddo.”

“Oh. What sort of reaction were you hoping for?”

She shrugs. “Confirmation? Denial? I assume you have an opinion. Or are you too embarrassed to talk about girls with your mother?”

“Yes. That one.” Cindy’s looking back at them now, waving him over.

“All right, go. Have fun. Call when you want a ride home,” says his mother, like she’s still waiting for a reaction, and damn it, did she just figure everything out? Sometimes, Ben wishes he had more oblivious parents. Or, at least, a mother who didn’t find it so amusing to pick on him. Because of course she has to wait until he’s halfway over to his friends and then yell “Don’t get marinara sauce on your nice shirt!” loudly enough for the entire county to hear.

All things considered, Ben thinks a few hours later, the decorating was not nearly as miserable as it could have been. Yes, he’d had to be there an hour early. But at lunch he’d made an off-hand remark about the situation and, much to his surprise, some of Cindy’s friends had volunteered to help. And since most of Cindy’s friends are now dating most of his friends, he ends up with a fairly large decorating crew, although most of them keep disappearing. In pairs. Probably to the library.

Still, Katie Cooper (who’d been sitting next to him at lunch, and had been the first to volunteer) sticks around the gym, and she at least knows what you’re supposed to do with streamers and where the drinks table should go. So by the time she runs home to change, everything looks...well, not great, since the decorations budget was about twenty bucks, but at least he feels like his job is done. Or Cindy’s job (he still isn’t sure how, when, or why he volunteered to do it) is done. And he’d made it through lunch without any marinara sauce disasters.

Then, of course, everyone else arrives and the dance starts and he spends about three and a half of the next four hours sitting in the bleachers, wishing he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Not that he’s the only one wishing that. Probably two-thirds of the eighth grade class is sitting on the bleachers, a large group of boys on one side, a smaller group of girls on the other, since a bunch of the girls are off in a corner, dancing with each other. Every so often, one of them stops, giggling madly, and glances at the non-dancing boys, an invitation to join them that Ben suspects no one is ever going to accept. Only a few kids—Cindy and Steve are the most prominent, of course—are actually dancing as couples, the way you’re supposed to.

So he has some people to talk to, and it’s really not _that_ bad, but did Ben really want to spend his last Saturday night at home in a contest to see who can drink the most cans of root beer without having to go to the bathroom, trying his hardest not to stare too obviously at a certain girl on the dance floor?

No, he really didn’t, he thinks, bowing out of the contest after his third root beer and ignoring the subsequent chorus of taunts about his obviously puny bladder. The nearest bathroom is across the gym, and he has to skirt past the group of non-dancing girls to get there, but he makes it there and back without incident. Well, there are people making out in the hall that leads to the bathroom, but that’s to be expected at this point.

Coming back into the gym, though, he suddenly can’t bear the thought of going back to the bleachers. Even from all the way across the gym, with music blaring, he can tell that they’ve progressed from a root beer drinking contest to a belching contest, and just…ugh. Steve, who can never resist a belching contest, has joined them, and Ben really doesn’t want to be around Steve right this instant. So now what’s he supposed to do? Go sit with his dad and the other chaperones? Go sit by himself in the corner? Stand here and lean against the wall until something interesting happens? Write another letter to the girl in Pawnee, whoever she is? He wishes he was at a dance in Pawnee. If the gym got invaded by raccoons, he’d get to go home early.

“Hey,” says a voice in his ear, and he jumps backwards, banging his head on the wall. “Sorry,” says Cindy, giggling a little. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, trying desperately to play it cool. “What, um—what’s up?”

“The gym looks good,” she says, ignoring him.

“Yeah, it came out pretty well,” he says. Damn it, he needs to stop starting every sentence with “yeah.” He tries clearing his throat a little bit. That probably isn’t any better. “Katie helped a lot.”

Cindy nods, twirling her hair around one finger. “She said you had it all under control without her.” Cindy’s not even looking at him at all; she’s staring across the gym at the group of girls dancing by themselves. Ben looks that way too. They’re all still dancing, although a few of them have drifted over to watch (listen to?) the belching contest.

“So,” says Cindy, turning her head back to him, “are you going to dance at all tonight, or are you just going to drink root beer with the idiots?”

“Um,” he says. “I don’t know. Yeah, probably—or no, not. I don’t—I don’t really dance.” Oh good. That was articulate. Although it does not escape his notice that she excluded him from the idiots.

She rolls her eyes at him. “You should dance, stupid. That’s the point.”

“Um,” he says again, shifting his weight a little. His shoes suddenly feel really tight. Why is Cindy talking to him right now, exactly? “By myself, or…?”

“Oh, my _god_.” Great, now she’s actually laughing at him. “No, moron. You should ask a girl.”

“Um,” he says for the third time.

“Jeez, Ben,” says Cindy, grabbing him by the elbow. She starts dragging him across the floor. “This isn’t rocket science. Look, those are girls over there—” she points at the belching contest, which everyone is now watching—“and all you have to do is go up to one and say ‘Hey, want to dance with me?’ Then she says yes, and then you go onto the middle of the floor and—”

“Yeah, I know how it’s supposed to work,” he mutters irritably, dragging his feet. Cindy is clearly misguided about both the part where the girl says yes and the part where he can dance.

She stops dead in her tracks, lets go of his elbow, crosses her arms. “Ask Katie.”

“What?”

“Ask Katie to dance. She’s been by herself all night too.”

Yeah, that is a little weird, actually. Katie is…popular. He’s pretty sure of that. Come to think of it, though, he’s never seen her anywhere near the encyclopedias.

“Um…” he says for the fourth time.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” says Cindy. “Ben, I know she really wants to dance with someone, and…and it should be you. Go have some fun. That’s an order.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” he protests, but of course she can. 

“Think of it as a favor to me,” she says, cheerfully. “It’s my last command as class president.” And before he knows it, Cindy’s dragged him across the rest of the floor and sort of flung him in front of Katie. She gives Ben a very pointed look before pulling a protesting Steve away from the belching contest.

“Um, hi,” he says. Damn it.

“Hi,” Katie says, smiling a little.

“Um, you…look nice,” he offers. She does, actually.

“Thanks. You, too,” she says, blushing, even though he hasn’t changed clothes since graduation and therefore looks exactly the same as he did this morning. Possibly he’s sweatier, or more wrinkled. Well, at least she’s being polite.

“So…”

“Yeah?”

Oh god, he actually has to say the words, doesn’t he? He swallows, hard, tries to look at her instead of the floor. “Uh, do you want to dance?”

“Yeah, okay,” she says, and to his surprise, she actually sounds kind of happy about it.

“Okay, great,” Ben says, now trying to figure out where his hands are supposed to go. He is supposed to be touching her, right? Thankfully, Katie decides to take over, and just sort of…rearranges him. His main goal now is just to step on her feet as few times as possible. “Just so you know, I’m not good at this,” he admits, trying desperately to keep some sort of rhythm.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Neither am I,” says Katie, although she definitely is.

“So why are we doing it, then?” he asks as they bop awkwardly past the chorus of belching.

“I don’t know, because it’s fun?” she says. “You’re doing fine.”

Apparently he is doing okay, because she doesn’t let go of him when Paula Abdul gives way to Sinead O’Connor. By the time they get through Madonna and MC Hammer, he’s feeling a little more relaxed, which means he’s either loosened up slightly or he’s just exhausted from trying not to mess up. He’s not really sure which. Thank god “U Can’t Touch This” is the last song of the night. Katie finally removes her hands, says she had fun, asks what he’s doing that summer. Her face gets a little weird when he says he’s leaving for Indiana in a few days and won’t be back for two months.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, I guess I’ll see you when school starts again.”

“Yeah, okay, see you then,” he says, because of course they’ll see each other—the high school is three times the size of the middle school, but that still doesn’t make it big or anything. She hesitates for a moment, like she’s waiting for him to say something else. But he doesn’t, so she sort of backs away. Then Cindy runs over to her, and the two of them leave together, deep in conversation.

It isn’t until four days later—after Ben has collected eight dozen root beer cans for recycling, thrown away twenty dollars’ worth of streamers, mailed a copy of his valedictory speech to the girl in Pawnee, packed his suitcase, endured fifty-seven repeats of “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” and woken up before the break of dawn to climb in the family minivan—it isn’t until late Wednesday morning, when the Wyatts are halfway across Wisconsin, that it finally occurs to him what all _that_ had been about.

Jesus Christ, he’s an idiot.

He spends the rest of the drive staring out of the window, trying to figure out if he should feel better or worse about himself, changing his mind with nearly every cow pasture they pass.

On the one hand, there might be at least one girl who…something. He can’t quite bring himself to believe that yet. On the other hand, it isn’t the _right_ girl who…something. And, of course, he spent the entire night being stupid about both girls in one way or another, apparently with both of them noticing and _talking to each other_ about it.

Please, please, please let there be no girls at this camp.

No, wait. Of course there are girls at this camp. One has been sending him letters for the past few weeks. Really awesome letters, in fact.

He can’t _wait_ to mess up everything with that one too.

But does he have to mess it up? Recent evidence would suggest that messing everything up with his pen pal might not actually be a foregone conclusion. After all, a reasonably popular, pretty girl had wanted, maybe, to dance with him (although it is entirely possible that Cindy put Katie up to the whole thing. It’s really entirely possible. But even if that was the case, a reasonably popular, pretty girl had agreed to dance with him anyway, in public, so there’s still that small consolation no matter what). He might be able to not mess _some_ things up. Maybe. They could just be friends. That would be okay. Great, in fact. Especially since he has the impression that dating is pretty low on his pen pal’s list of priorities.

Which, of course, is one of the things that he likes about her.

Damn it.

When did he even start thinking about her like that? He has no idea.

Oh god, he mailed her his _graduation speech_. Why? _Why_ did he do that? Is there any possible less cool thing that he could have sent her? The naked baby pictures come to mind, but really, that’s about it.

Maybe he’ll get eaten by a raccoon.

He can only hope.

***

“Leslie, you absolutely cannot take this bathing suit to camp,” Ann declares, holding up an old multicolored neon tank suit.

“Why not? Lindsay said it was fine.” It’s Wednesday morning and they’re leaving on Friday and Leslie cannot _believe_ that she has waited this long to pack. Thank heavens Ann has come over to help, because Lindsay has been emphatically not talking to Leslie for the past week, ever since Leslie had told her that Mark Brendanawicz looked like a young Abraham Lincoln. She’d meant it as a compliment, of course—she was trying very hard to be supportive of stupid Lindsay and her stupid interests—but for some reason Lindsay was insisting on taking it as an insult.

“Because it looks like it’s two years old,” says Ann, trying to climb over a giant pile of clothes (basically everything Leslie’s owned since first grade) that the closet has vomited onto the floor. “The butt is all pilled and the elastic is kind of saggy. Also? It’s really ugly. Are you sure Lindsay has your best interests in mind?”

She’s going to ignore those last few sentences. “It is two years old. I got that suit the summer after sixth grade.”

“And it still fits?” asks Ann incredulously.

“Yes,” Leslie mutters. She can’t help being small.

Ann groans. “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Leslie, this thing is awful. You need something cuter.”

“No, I don’t. I like that suit, Ann, it’s comfortable.”

“Oh, my god, that is so not the point of a bathing suit,” groans Ann. “Leslie, I know you haven’t quite figured this out yet, but there are going to be _boys_ at camp. You need a bikini.”

Leslie sighs. “Not you, too.”

“Not me too what?” asks Ann, looking suspicious now.

Leslie glares at Ann. “Are you boy crazy now too? Lindsay’s been driving me nuts. She won’t shut up about stupid Mark. I mean, she wouldn’t until she stopped talking to me.”

Ann’s eyes widen. “See! That’s what it is. Of course she told you this looks fine. She doesn’t want any competition and she knows you’d look better in a bikini than she would.”

God, Ann doesn’t get it sometimes. “Ann, okay. One, you’ve only met Lindsay once—you don’t know her at all. She isn’t like that. Two, I don’t _care_ whether or not there are boys or what anyone looks like in a bikini. I’m going to go swimming because it’ll be hot, and I like swimming, and the point of a bathing suit is to keep everything covered so that you don’t get pond algae in weird places.” Okay, so maybe Lindsay is kind of pudgy and maybe she _has_ been a little bit like that recently, now that Leslie comes to think of it, but still. It’s obviously just a phase and as soon as they’re away from Mark Brendanawicz, everything will be better.

But Ann just marches over to the trash can as dramatically as she can, which isn’t very considering how many clothes are on the floor, and dangles the bathing suit over her wastepaper basket. “Nope, this suit is an embarrassment,” she declares. “I’m throwing it out and we’re going to go to the mall right now to buy you a new one.”

Leslie watches Ann for a moment, and then sits on her bed and stares. Not at the bathing suit, but next to the wastepaper basket, at her nightstand, where all the letters from her mysterious pen pal are hidden.

“Leslie? Are you okay? You stopped yelling at me.”

She looks back at Ann. That suit really is pretty ugly now. It might have been ugly when she’d bought it. Is it supposed to look like graffiti or something? She suddenly can’t bear the thought of wearing it again.

“I’m fine. Great,” she says, tearing her gaze from the nightstand. “No, you’re right. I do need a new swimsuit.” She takes a deep breath. “Do you really think I can pull off a bikini?”

“Oh, hell yes,” says Ann, dropping the tank suit in Leslie’s trash can unceremoniously.

“Ann!” Leslie admonishes, rescuing it. “It’s still a perfectly good suit. Don’t throw it out, I’ll donate it somewhere.” She tosses the suit onto one of the many clothing piles on her floor.

For some reason, Ann looks skeptical. “Sure you will.”

An hour later, Mrs. Perkins has dropped them off at the Eagleton Mall and Leslie is standing in the juniors section at Macy’s, trying to process the racks and racks of swimsuits. Why are there so many? Ann, who obviously has a lot more experience with this sort of thing, is selecting bits and pieces with a critical eye.

“We’ll start with these,” says Ann confidently, thrusting a pile of plastic hangers into Leslie’s arms. “That pastel pink one first.”

Wow, that seems tiny. And flimsy. “Are you sure, Ann? Look at it,” Leslie says, holding up the top. “It just ties on. What if it pops open while I’m swimming?”

Ann rolls her eyes. “Double knots.” She starts walking towards the dressing room. “Just try it on. If it sucks, we try another one.”

“It has weird padding.” Maybe she should go look for another tank suit.

“That’s _shaping_. Trust me, you want it,” says Ann, pushing Leslie into a stall.

It takes a few minutes for Leslie to figure out the top straps, but in the end they’re not that complicated and Ann’s right, she did want the shaping. The bottom looks a little weird, since her panties are sticking out from under the sides, but she can sort of imagine if they weren’t…

“Well?” asks Ann from outside the stall.

Leslie turns around a couple of times, looks at her butt in the mirror, thinking. “My mom would never let me wear this.” She so wouldn’t.

“Stop making up excuses! Just pack it at the bottom of your bag. She isn’t going to know.”

Can Leslie be that sneaky? Yeah, she can. Like a spy. She’s been having pretty good luck with being mysterious lately.

Her butt does look pretty good.

“Okay, objectively?” she calls through the door. “I look awesome in this.”

“Yay!” chirps Ann.

“But I don’t like the color. Does it come in something other than pink?”

“I think I saw it in blue,” Ann says. “I’ll go find it in your size. Try on the other ones.”

Actually, Leslie thinks, as they leave Macy’s with not one but three bikinis (for practical reasons; she doesn’t want to put on a wet suit if she doesn’t have to, and with three suits, at least one will always be dry even if she goes swimming twice a day), that hadn’t been so bad at all.

“Makeup next?” Ann suggests, pointing at a very glittery store Leslie’s never noticed before.

“Ew! No, Ann, gross,” Leslie protests, but somehow Ann talks her into two lip glosses and a tube of mascara. Mercifully, her birthday money is pretty much gone after that, so she has an excuse when Ann starts asking about the state of her bras.

On the way home, Leslie rips off the bathing suit tags and gives them to Ann to throw away elsewhere. Then she runs upstairs, wraps the bikinis in an old sweatshirt, and shoves them at the bottom of her suitcase before her mother gets home. The makeup is pretty easy to hide too, rolled up in a pair of socks. Yeah, she’s gotten good at being sneaky.

Another letter arrives late that afternoon, which she’s excited about until Marlene takes it as a sign that Leslie needs lecturing about all the problems boys can cause and how nervous it makes her and Leslie isn’t planning on letting this boy do anything to her at camp, is she?

“Mom, relax. It’s not like that.”

“You’re writing each other very frequently,” Marlene points out. “As your mother, I have concerns.”

“I still don’t even know his name,” Leslie protests, but her mother is unimpressed. Shoot. What would… “He already has a girlfriend,” she improvises. He must, right? Girls must be all over him, even with the Star Wars thing. “Her name is—” wait, that doesn’t make sense, why would she know the girlfriend’s name? “You know what, I don’t know her name either, but she definitely exists. She plays…football. I mean, soccer.” Was that convincing? No. Marlene is arching her eyebrows now, and—yeah, here comes the head tilt. “Mom, seriously. I’m not going to do anything with any boys.” She stares directly into her mother’s eyes, willing her to believe. “Most of them are dumb. And they smell bad.” It’s still not working. “And I’m going to campaign to run the talent show and start up a field hockey league, so there wouldn’t be any time for boys anyway. It’s all me, Lindsay, and Ann this summer. Like the Three Musketeers.”

Marlene sighs, and actually smiles a little. “Okay, sweetheart. I believe you.” She stands up, starts to walk to the kitchen. “Did you get anything at the mall today?”

“Bikinis,” Leslie says immediately, like it’s a reflex. Shoot. Her mother’s eyebrows go up again. “Not for me. For Ann. Ann got bikinis. They were very conservative.”

If spy camp existed, Leslie thinks as she runs upstairs with her letter, she would probably have been thrown out of it already.

Oh, crap, what if he _does_ have a girlfriend? Wouldn’t he have mentioned her by now? He would have, right? No, she thinks, remembering the encyclopedia story, he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Unless he’s been making everything up. She doesn’t really believe that he has been; his letters don’t seem like that, but…

She might need to call Ann. Or Lindsay. No, Lindsay still isn’t talking to her. And she can’t tell Ann, not when she was just complaining about Ann being boy crazy earlier today. That would just be hypocritical, and Leslie hates hypocrites.

It actually takes her a minute to realize that she’s still holding an unopened letter from him. She takes a deep breath, reminds herself that she has _never met this person_ and that she absolutely _should not get her hopes up_. She just has to stay focused until Friday. On Friday they’ll meet, probably, and then…

Okay, she has no idea what’s supposed to come between the part where they meet and the part where he gives a press conference to confirm that yes, he’s thrilled to be the first First Husband. No, that might be too far in the future. No need to get ahead of herself. The part where they sit at one of the camp picnic tables and have a deep and meaningful conversation about their mutual respect for one another. No, that doesn’t sound very romantic. Crap. The part where they secretly make out in the art supply closet? Yes, that sounds better, although the art supply closet is always locked and she has no idea how they’d get in there and honestly, she doesn’t even know how they’re supposed to get from meeting in person to making out.

She really needs to talk to Ann about this. She’s pretty sure Ann has made out with at least one boy; Ann’s too pretty to not have been kissed yet. But she can’t. Darn it.

Well, maybe he’ll say something really awful in this letter. Then she’ll be magically not attracted to him and she can turn her full attention back to how much fun she, Lindsay, and Ann are going to have together.

She throws a pile of clothes off her beanbag chair, sits down, takes a deep breath, and opens the letter.

_Dear Friend,_

_So, this is kind of short and kind of a strange thing to send you, and you might not even get it before you leave for camp, but I thought I’d send it anyway. Today was graduation and then our dance, and the dance was pretty weird (you don’t even want to know how many root beer cans I had to clean up from under the bleachers, or how loud the belching contest got) but graduation itself was all right. You know, apart from everyone’s parents losing their marbles, including mine. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of “You’re so grown up!” today…okay, I’d only have about four dollars. But the picture-taking really was out of control._

_Anyway, I had to give a speech this morning and since you like politics and stuff so much, I thought you might like to read it. If not, then you can just throw it out or something. I won’t be offended. Don’t worry, I’ve redacted all the information that might reveal my identity._

_See you soon, I guess?_

Oh, no. A speech. This is not going to help unseduce her at _all_. She plunges ahead anyway. True to his word, all the names and locations are blacked out.

It’s a really _good_ speech. It talks about all the little things that students do every day, things that make an impact on their school and each other and the town of [blank], little projects that build into larger projects, and how much they’ve all accomplished inside and outside of school, and how they’re going to go on and build bigger things. In short, it is exactly the kind of speech Leslie wishes she could have delivered at her own graduation, except that Pawnee had eliminated eighth-grade graduation ceremonies in the same round of budget cuts that took out the Harvest Festival a couple of years ago. It’s a speech that makes her want to run right out and—and build something, like a winter sports complex, although she has no idea why that should be the first project to spring to mind.

Well, so much for being magically unattracted to him. Her mind’s gone right into the gutter, although her imagination is honestly still pretty tame when it comes to boys. This really shouldn’t really be surprising, she tells herself, since she’s barely even had the urge to kiss a boy before the past few weeks. It’s also hard to imagine much happening, she realizes, when she has no idea what he even looks like.

She reads the speech a few more times.

It probably doesn’t matter what he looks like. He would probably have to have, like, three heads before she’d be dissuaded from wanting to make out with him now, probably.

Only two more days until camp. Leslie absolutely cannot wait for Friday to get here. This is going to be the best summer ever.

Or so she thinks, until Friday morning actually arrives and everything goes to hell.

She, Lindsay, and Ann are carpooling to camp, which is about a two-hour drive from Pawnee. They’re starting the summer camp trip like Leslie always starts her summer camp trips, with a celebratory waffle breakfast at JJ’s. Lindsay’s finally talking to Leslie again, sort of, but she’s in a terrible mood from the instant she walks in the door at the diner.

“The waffles give me stomach cramps,” she whines.

“Eat something else, then,” says Ann, rolling her eyes.

“Everything on this menu has too many calories,” Lindsay says in her snootiest voice, tugging at the hem of her baggy sweatshirt and sneering at the menu. Ann makes a face at that statement, which Lindsay notices, and then she and Ann start arguing about omelets, which is really maybe the dumbest argument Leslie’s ever heard.

Finally, Lindsay agrees to order fruit salad and toast, but she says it tastes gross and hardly eats any of it, which means she’s hungry within the first thirty minutes of the car ride. But she doesn’t want a Sweetums granola bar, either (too much sugar, she says, as if such a thing were possible), and she starts complaining again, claiming that she’s carsick and she has to go to the bathroom.

So they pull over at a gas station that Lindsay deems filthy. Ann mutters something under her breath that sounds very much like “it was cleaner before you used it,” and Leslie’s pretty sure both Lindsay and her mother heard that, because Marlene orders Leslie into the backseat with Ann, under the rationale that Lindsay won’t get as carsick in the front.

That doesn’t really stop Lindsay from complaining, though, nor does it stop Ann from making snippy comments under her breath that everyone hears anyway. Within another fifteen minutes, Leslie is so desperate to be anywhere other than this car that she actually picks up one of the _Seventeen_ magazines that Ann’s brought along and starts to read it, even though she usually thinks _Seventeen_ is dumb and she’ll definitely get carsick if she tries to read in the back seat.

She really doesn’t care right now, though. She just wants something else to think about for the next hour or so.

She flips it open.

 _“Grab your guy in 30 days!”_ promises the table of contents. _“Our tips are guaranteed to get your crush crushing on you, too. What to do to get him, and what to do once you’ve got him.”_

Wait, this might actually be helpful. It’s all the advice she’d get from Ann, but without actually having to admit anything to her. Leslie raises her eyes over the edge of the magazine. Good, no one’s looking at her. She nonchalantly flips to the article, and begins to read.

Of course, thirty days is half of camp, and she doesn’t want to waste any time here, so she’s obviously going to have to adapt some of these strategies. Well, first, she can ignore all the ones about buying new outfits. What’s packed is packed, she thinks, silently thanking Ann for insisting on the new bathing suits. And a lot of the advice has to do with phone calls and going to school events and crap, those aren’t going to work at camp either. And a lot of the tips have to do with _keeping_ the guy after you’ve already got him and really, how is this supposed to help her?

Finally, on day 18 of the 30-day plan, she finds a list of the top three things that girls do that guys find really appealing.

One: Be interested in what he’s interested in. Okay, she can try to do that. His letters are hidden in the bottom of her suitcase, so she can’t look at them for reference, but she’s read them often enough to have most of them practically memorized. Baseball. Science fiction. She doesn’t like those things, though. Organizing giant projects, maybe. She can definitely handle that last one.

Two: Play hard to get/don’t make it too obvious that you like him. Leslie isn’t sure of exactly how to go about doing that, but it seems like ignoring him and paying attention to other guys are the keys. That seems like questionable advice to her, but…well, okay, she can try that too.

Three: Make even boring stuff fun. That one will be hard, since nothing at camp is boring. Well, maybe mess hall duty, but it’s kind of unlikely that they’ll be assigned to that at the same time.

Can she do these things? Based on what this magazine is telling her, she pretty much _has_ to do them, if she wants to have a shot with him. It kind of sounds like she’s going to have to do a lot of pretending. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense just to say something like, “Hey, I like you, want to make out?” Why would ignoring him on purpose make him more interested in her? Suddenly she feels very confused about boys.

And now she has a headache. Darn it, this always happens when she reads in the car. She shoves the magazine back in Ann’s backpack, closes her eyes, and hopes the bickering will stop soon.

It doesn’t. In fact, it gets worse. By the time they finally pull into the camp, Leslie’s head is pounding worse than ever, and the only thing she can think of is how much she wants to kill both Lindsay and Ann.

And of course—of _course_ \--they’re all in the same bunkhouse. Three hours ago, Leslie would have been thrilled by that news, but now she’s kind of convinced that carefully embroidering those “Three Musketeers” t-shirts was a waste of time.

She hugs her mother goodbye in the parking lot, then returns to the bunkhouse. Maybe eating their brown-bag lunches will make everything better. They’ll all go sit by the lake together, and…

Leslie has to pass one of the boys’ bunkhouses to get back to theirs, and on the stoop of the boys’ cabin, she catches a glimpse of something that makes her heart sink.

Lindsay is talking to Mark Brendanawicz.

Leslie normally loves seeing familiar faces at camp, (and she already recognizes at least one other kid from Pawnee Middle inside the bunkhouse), but did one of them have to be Mark? The very person she’s been waiting to get Lindsay away from? What the _hell_ is he doing here? she wonders, momentarily furious.

Oh. He’s craning his neck around Lindsay, clearly trying to get a better look at Ann, who has decided that now is an appropriate time to change into her skimpiest tank top.

No, no, no. Leslie is absolutely not going to let her perfect summer go down in flames because Ann and Lindsay got off on the wrong foot, or because Mark is here. Maybe she feels a little lost right now, but they’ll have a couple of hours of free time tonight—she’ll just skip the usual hanging out that happens right after the introductory nighttime barbecue, and come straight back to the bunkhouse to draw up some new plans. Thank goodness she thought to pack a few empty binders, she thinks, squaring her shoulders as she brushes past Ann and grabs her lunch bag from the bed. She’s going to go down to the picnic tables by the lake and eat her lunch alone. It’ll be quieter over there, and maybe her head will stop pounding.

She grabs Ann’s copy of _Seventeen_ on her way out, too. Just to have something to distract her.

Not because she wants to keep studying it or anything.

Nope.

***


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

 

 

Ben wakes up early Friday morning in his cousin Richie’s bed (Richie’s already at baseball camp, damn him), exhausted. It’s not from Wednesday’s eleven-hour drive, or from the six-hour hike they went on yesterday, or even from the fact that this mattress is ridiculously uncomfortable. It’s because every time he goes to sleep, he sees Cindy and Steve in the library. Really, he should be used to this by now; he’s seen them doing that almost every time he’s closed his eyes for the past four weeks. Last night, though, his subconscious decided to play really dirty, undoubtedly fueled by a combination of Ben’s Wisconsin epiphany and by his father’s elaborate descriptions of the school dance at dinner with his aunt and uncle on Wednesday.

Now, when Ben tries to sleep, he sees Cindy breaking apart from Steve and rounding on him, furious.

“What’s wrong with you?” she keeps asking. “Why are you watching us? Why were you so mean to Katie?” Then she goes back to making out with Steve. And those are the better nightmares. Sometimes Cindy asks why he thinks he would ever have a shot with either of them.

So no, he hasn’t slept very well for the past couple of days and yes, he’s getting really tired of having to deal with his own…yeah, he doesn’t even have a word for what this is.

He heads into the bathroom, wanting some time to himself before Jess wakes up, before he has to go downstairs and face not two but four adults hell-bent on asking him annoying questions about girls and his plans for high school. This is the day they’ll actually arrive at camp, and he needs to have a serious talk with himself before he inadvertently ruins his summer.

Okay, Ben thinks, stepping into the shower. There are things he has control over and things he doesn’t.

He doesn’t have control over his glasses or his braces or his body’s stubborn refusal to start growing in the right direction. He doesn’t have control over the fact that the girl he’s liked for god knows how long is dating his best friend, especially since he’s not even going to be in Partridge for the next two months. He doesn’t have _much_ control over the fact that most of the things he likes are nerdy.

He _does_ have control over whether or not he’s embarrassed about all of those things. Or in theory, he does. He’s not at all sure that he just can turn off being self-conscious, but he kind of needs to try. Because he’s definitely very tired of feeling like a loser all the time when he’s pretty sure, logically, that he isn’t one.

Easier said than done, he thinks, turning off the shower. But it’s a starting point.

Back in the bedroom, he grabs a sheet of paper from Richie’s desk and starts to make a list of goals for the summer, some sort of plan for the next two months. Starts to, as in, he sits at the desk staring at a blank piece of paper for more than ten minutes without managing to think of anything to write on it except “stop it,” which is not nearly specific enough.

Well, at least he’s trying to be more confident, sort of.

Ben folds up the blank piece of paper and tucks it in the back of the only book he’s brought with him, his mom’s old edition of _The Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, which she swears he’ll love even if he hasn’t read _The Hobbit_ yet. (He’s only read the first chapter of the first book so far, but he thinks she might be right.) Even if he doesn’t have a list yet, it never hurts to have extra paper.

They eat a late breakfast, say goodbye to his aunt and uncle, then pile in the minivan and drive the two hours to camp. The area’s kind of pretty, although Ben is a tiny bit concerned about the sheer quantity of dead raccoons he’s seen on the side of the road.

The camp seems nice enough, too, when they arrive. They’re greeted at the gate by the camp director, an affable, overweight man named Jerry, who drops his clipboard in the dirt and gets two paper cuts in the process of giving them directions to the cabins.

“That’s not inspiring,” says Ben’s mom, quietly, as they roll towards the parking lot.

Both of his parents are understandably more concerned with getting Jess settled in, so Ben drags his suitcase towards cabin number six by himself.

“Dude! Are you one of our bunkmates?” shouts a voice from inside the cabin. A large, rangy, blond kid on Rollerblades literally falls down the front steps, then immediately bounces to his feet and raises his hand for a high-five. “I’m Andy.”

“Ben,” says Ben, awkwardly completing the high-five. Even with that, he likes Andy immediately. This is a good sign, right?

“So you’re with us? Awesome,” says Andy. “Want a hand with that?” He falls down twice trying to drag Ben’s suitcase into the cabin.

“Should you be doing that on Rollerblades?” Ben asks, hoisting his suitcase up the steps, but Andy doesn’t appear to hear him.

“That’s the only bed left,” says Andy, pointing to the middle of three bunk beds. “You can have top or bottom. The last guy isn’t here yet.” He skates over to the left corner. “I’m in the top bunk here. This is Mark,” he says, indicating a tall kid stretched out on the bottom bunk, playing an LCD football game. “Mark, Ben.”

“Hey,” says Mark, not really looking up. He looks like he’s part of the cool crowd, Ben thinks.

“J.R. and Darwish—that’s their bed—went to check out the bathroom,” says Andy, gesturing wildly. Or maybe he’s trying to keep his balance. “It’s a separate building, over that way. Hey, where are you from?”

“Minnesota,” says Ben.

“Dude, no way! That’s—” He pauses. “I do not know anything about Minnesota, except that the Vikings suck.”

Ben smiles. “Don’t worry, it isn’t that interesting.” He picks the top bunk, figuring being higher up might be more private somehow, and throws his backpack up there to claim it.

“Me and Mark are from Pawnee. It’s like—” Andy draws a map in mid-air. “Indy is about here, and we’re about here right now, and Pawnee is down here.”

Pawnee, huh? Ben wonders how big Pawnee is, and how much Andy and Mark might know about the girls there.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” he says.

“So, you have, like, three hours to unpack,” says Andy, whose stuff appears to have been blown up rather than put away. “Shelves are over there, and then we have orientation in here at four.”

“Cool,” says Ben. “I should probably find my parents. They’re getting my little sister into her cabin.”

“Want a tour guide?” asks Andy, skating a figure-eight in the middle of the floor. “I’ve been coming here forever. I know where everything is.”

“Yeah, great,” says Ben, and—yeah, okay, Andy _is_ going to try to rollerblade over the dirt paths.

They find Jess’s cabin pretty quickly. She’s already made two new best friends: her pen pal, a smallish and inquisitive girl named Shauna, and another bunkmate, April, who is surprisingly unsettling for a ten-year-old. Somehow everyone winds up coming back to cabin six, Shauna and Jess firing off questions to each other, April snapping a wad of bubble gum and staring at everything without talking at all, and Andy rambling about how awesome the camp is, stumbling backwards in his Rollerblades. They take a circuitous route, going all the way around the camp so that Andy can show everyone the mess hall and the rec building and the swimming lake and the all-purpose sports field, which appears to be a baseball diamond.

“We call it the all-purpose field, but we only have baseball equipment and, like, two soccer balls but no goals,” says Andy, “so it’s really just the baseball field.” He points at one of the floodlights, which is turned on for some reason, and laughs. “Jerry still hasn’t fixed the rogue light! That one doesn’t turn off. It was like that last year.” He stumbles again, but manages not to fall this time. “Anyway, I hope you like baseball, because we can’t really play any other sports. I didn’t even bring my lacrosse stuff this year.”

This camp might actually be okay, Ben thinks, as the whole group arrives back at the cabin. Mark’s gone, and the other two aren’t back yet, so Andy points out all the highlights of their bunk (there really aren’t any, unless you count suitcases), then catches sight of some kids from a previous year’s camp walking past their door, and leaves to say hi to them. Shauna and April and Jess all follow him, and Ben’s dad goes to find the restroom.

“So I guess this is goodbye, kiddo,” says his mom. She pulls out her camera. “Want your picture taken with the bunk bed?”

“Not really,” he says, but of course she insists on taking one anyway.

“Thanks for humoring me,” she says, putting the camera back in her purse. She looks around the bunks. “So. Which one of these kids is the pen pal you’ve been writing to twice a week? Andy?”

“No,” he says. Shit, she noticed how many letters he’d been sending? “My pen pal is a girl.”

“Oh,” she says, sounding a little surprised. “Have you met her yet?”

“No. I…don’t know her name,” he admits. “She—she wanted to stay anonymous.”

“Why?” asks his mother, raising her eyebrows.

He shakes his head. “Something to do with pretending to be spies. She’s a little…weird.”

“That’s interesting,” she says, looking highly amused. “Is there espionage going on in Partridge that I need to know about? Have you been exchanging classified documents?”

“No, just letters about normal stuff without any personal information in them,” Ben says. It really does sound crazy when he hears the words out loud. “I told her about the redecorating.”

He’s pretty sure his mother is trying not to laugh, but thankfully, she holds it together. “Okay,” she says. “Well, I hope she’s nice. Now can I have a hug before I don’t see you for two months?”

Yeah, okay, he can do that.

She sighs, and messes up his hair. “When you do meet this girl,” she says, “try not to break her heart, okay?”

“Mom…” he groans.

“Or anyone else’s.”

“ _Mom…_ ”

“Do we need to have a talk about the birds and the bees before I go?”

“Mom!” Ben yells. “Can you just stop—do you have to—”

“Yes, I do,” she says, grinning. “Trust me, kiddo. If you could just see your face, you’d pick on you too.” She kisses him quickly on the forehead. “God, I’m going to miss you.” His dad returns from the bathroom, makes a remark about the time.

“We’d better get going, I guess,” says his mom. “I know you’ll be good, but have fun, okay? And take care of Jessica.”

“I will,” Ben promises, feeling a tiny twinge as his parents say their final goodbyes and I-love-yous to him and Jess, and disappear into the crowd of departing parents. “Don’t mess up my stuff!” he calls after them, but they’re already too far away to hear.

Ben makes a quick visit to the bathroom, which he supposes could be grosser, and heads back to the cabin. When he returns, he finds three unfamiliar faces, along with Andy and Mark. Two of them appear to be best friends already—an extremely small Indian kid from South Carolina, who introduces himself as Darwish, and J.R., also from Pawnee, who’s tall and lanky and has a ridiculous haircut. Everyone, except maybe Mark, seems slightly in awe of the newly arrived sixth bunkmate (who’s from Indianapolis, which apparently is some sort of big deal), and Ben kind of understands why, because this kid honestly looks like a cross between a movie star and an Olympic athlete.

“Chris Traeger!” he says, smiling broadly. His teeth are perfect too, of course.

“Ben, this is Chris,” says Andy, helpfully.

“Ben! What’s your last name?” says Chris.

“Wyatt,” he says, uncertainly, because why does that matter?

“Ben Wyatt,” Chris repeats, slowly, pointing at Ben’s head. Then he claps both his hands on Ben’s shoulders. “You are going to be literally the best bunkmate that I have ever had.”

Well, this is weird. “Thank you?” Ben replies, puzzled.

“I’m _so_ glad you chose the top bunk,” says Chris, as they start unpacking. “I wouldn’t want to wake you up in the middle of the night. I urinate _very_ frequently.”

Ben thinks he might prefer to unpack in silence, if this is the conversation they’re going to have. But Andy, who is the only one of them to have attended this camp before, keeps up a perpetual chatter, mostly about the daily activities.

“It’s totally awesome,” he says, finally removing the Rollerblades and clambering onto his bunk, where he picks up an acoustic guitar and starts making horrible noises with it. “The leadership part is that we pretty much get to decide what we want to do almost all of the time. We get to, like, make projects and stuff.”

“Jeez, Andy,” Mark calls from the bottom bunk, “your feet stink.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Andy. “Sorry, dude. So, I am forming a band. Who’s in? I need a drummer.”

“Naw, I’m more into rap,” says Darwish, who’s inspecting all the labels of J.R.’s polo shirts. “What are the girls like?”

Mark shrugs. “They’re girls.”

“Oh!” yells Andy, suddenly, when he sees Ben’s baseball glove. “Ben, I brought my glove too. We should totally start a league or something. Mark, do you have your stuff?”

“I do indeed,” says Mark, reaching under his bunk and pulling out a glove.

“Sweet,” says Andy. “Mark’s a pitcher. He’s awesome.”

“I’m all right,” says Mark, throwing his glove back under the bed. “Ben, what position do you play?”

Ben has “second base” on the tip of his tongue, but what the hell? None of these kids know him and he’s pretty sure there’s no one from Partridge around to dispute whatever he tells them. Go for what you want, he tells himself.

“Shortstop,” he says, hoping he sounds confident.

Andy leans over for a high-five, and falls off the top bunk with an almighty crash. “Whoops,” he says. “Shortstop. Excellent. We have half a team already.”

“One-third,” Ben corrects, automatically. He wonders if Andy is going to make it through so much as the first week of camp without grievously injuring himself.

Andy looks confused for a moment, then counts. “Three, six, nine. Oh, you’re right.” He punches Ben on the arm. “You, my friend, are a shortstop _and_ a smart man.”

“Chris?” says Mark. “You in?”

“Well, track is my main sport,” he says, “but I would be _thrilled_ to oversee an athletic conditioning program for a baseball team. Also, I can play outfield reasonably well.”

They’re still talking about baseball at four o’clock (with the occasional protest from Darwish, who thinks Bo Jackson is just a shoe model for god’s sake), when the door at the back of the cabin scrapes open.

“You are at camp now!” bellows a stocky, slightly terrifying college kid, emerging from the shadows. He’s got maybe the most impressive mustache that Ben has ever seen on a person under fifty. “My name is Ron Swanson, and I will be your counselor for the next eight weeks. Please do not take my job title as an indication that I care about your problems. I do not intend to do any actual counseling.” He unhooks one thumb from the waistband of his track shorts and throws it towards the back door. “My room is back there. There are only four circumstances under which you should disturb me. Fire! Earthquake! Profuse bleeding! Shark attack! Otherwise, leave me alone. You’re old enough to take care of yourselves. Son, pass these sheets around,” he adds, handing Ben a stack of paper.

Ben’s not sure how he feels about being addressed as “son” by someone who’s probably only five years older than he is, but he takes the top sheet of paper and hands the rest to Chris, who takes one and passes the stack to J.R., and so on.

“These are the camp rules,” says Ron. “Follow them, or don’t. I couldn’t care less. If you do decide to break the rules—” Ben has _no_ idea how Ron is doing that with his eyebrow— “I don’t want to know about it. You’ll only get in trouble if you’re stupid enough to get caught, so I suggest not being stupid. End of orientation!” He starts to leave.

Mark raises his hand. “There…aren’t any sharks in Indiana,” he points out.

Ron turns around, slowly. “I’m glad you realize that, son,” he says, before walking back to his room.

“Sweet!” yells Darwish, crumpling up the paper without even looking at it. “No rules. This is gonna be the party cabin.” He pauses, looks around the room. “Y’all are cool with parties, right?”

“This summer is going to be _awesome_ ,” sings J.R., giving Darwish a high-five.

“Want to go down and check out the equipment shed before dinner?” suggests Mark. “We should do an inventory before we start trying to form teams or whatever.”

“Sounds good,” agrees Ben. This camp seems to be full of weirdos, he thinks, but they’re mostly nice weirdos, and J.R.’s right. The summer might actually be awesome.

“Also,” says Mark, getting up and stretching, “we should visit the girls’ bunks.”

“Now that,” says Darwish, jumping down from his bunk, “is a proposition I can support. Lead the way, Brandanawicz.”

So they all go next door to bunk seven, except Chris, who wants to run a couple of miles before dinner.

“So, how many kids are here from Pawnee?” Ben asks Andy, who shrugs.

“Usually a bunch,” he says. “Probably forty or fifty total. Most of them are younger, though. We’re the oldest ones here.”

“Hey, Mark,” coos a girl’s voice from inside the cabin.

“Hey, Lindsay,” Mark replies, sounding a little bored. “These are my bunkmates. We just came over to say hi.”

They all shuffle into the girls’ cabin, which is a little cramped because the girls seem to have brought way too much luggage, but everyone finds a place to stand. Ben leans into the corner by the door, wondering. If Mark knows this Lindsay girl, then she’s probably from Pawnee.

“So, guys, this is Lindsay,” says Mark, taking it upon himself to do introductions. He points around the room. “That’s Donna, Joan, and Marcia. Man, it’s like the entire middle school is here,” he adds, disappointed. “Who else is in the cabin with you?”

“Leslie,” says Lindsay, making a face, “but she keeps disappearing.”

“That’s five,” says Mark. “Who’s six?”

Another girl pushes into the room, wearing an extremely skimpy tank top and holding a hand towel.

“You I don’t know,” says Mark, leaning against one of the bunks. It’s very obvious that he’s trying to look casual, Ben thinks.

“Hi,” says the girl, not really paying attention to him. “I’m Ann.”

“Mark,” says Mark. Lindsay’s glaring daggers at both of them, Ben notices, but she smiles sweetly the instant Mark turns back to her.

“Hi, everybody,” says Ann easily, waving at the boys. “Andy.” She doesn’t sound too enthused about seeing him. “You’re here.”

“Yeah,” says Andy, a little breathlessly. “Hi, Ann.” J.R. waves awkwardly. Darwish is practically drooling.

Good lord.

Half an hour later, as they make their way to the equipment shed (they meet up with Chris along the way), Ben’s feeling kind of exhausted again. Based on the dynamics he’s just witnessed in the girls’ cabin, he’s pretty sure that summer camp is going to provide exactly as many opportunities for walking in on people as school does. (According to Andy, there’s a library—or really more of a reading room—inside the rec building. Ben resolves to avoid it.) And, he reminds himself, none of the girls have met Chris yet. That is undoubtedly only going to make things worse.

All the girls in that particular cabin are from Pawnee, he’s learned, but Ann went to a different middle school than the rest of them, and he has no idea which of the five of them—if any—might be his pen pal. He strongly suspects that none of them are, though. And clearly, since no one has mentioned pen pals all afternoon, the instinct he had when he’d first gotten the letter from camp was correct, and they are too old to think that having a pen pal is cool, so it’s not exactly something he’s keen to bring up.

He’s almost completely forgotten that there’s even supposed to be a sixth girl in the cabin, let alone that she’s from Pawnee too.

Almost.

And that’s fine, because he isn’t going to care about that sort of thing anyway.

***

By the time late afternoon rolls around, Leslie just wants to go home. She wants to go back to Pawnee and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream even if it’s ninety degrees out, and curl up in her beanbag chair with her favorite biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, and forget about everything else.

She’d spent all afternoon by herself, going through Ann’s magazine over and over again, trying to figure out exactly how these dating strategies were supposed to work. She’d made notes in the margins and tried role-playing some scenarios by herself (that didn’t work at _all_ , she really needs a second person to do that), and she’d even tried sprawling on top of the picnic table for a nap, but she just kept hearing really loud circus music in her head and after twenty minutes, she’d gotten a sunburn.

That had been before orientation. She’d reluctantly returned to the cabin at four, only to discover that her new counselor for the summer, Tammy, was a heinous bitch. (Those were Ann’s words, but Leslie kind of agreed with them.) Plus, the remaining bunkmates had arrived, more Pawnee Middle kids, and she wasn’t particularly happy about having them as bunkmates—well, Donna was fine even if Leslie didn’t know her all that well, but Marcia? Joan? Those were honestly two of her least favorite people in the whole world, let alone in her school, and now she was going to be stuck living with them for the next eight weeks. She wouldn’t even be able to say anything at all in the cabin now, she knew, because Joan couldn’t keep her big mouth shut and Marcia was probably the most judgmental person Leslie had ever met.

After orientation, she’d put on sunscreen and returned to the picnic tables to start plotting strategies for salvaging this disastrous first day, and by extension the rest of the summer. What she needed to do, she thought, was come up with some solid activities that the three of them would all enjoy. Then they’d just do those activities exclusively until everything worked out.

So she’d made a list of all the things Ann liked to do and a list of all the things Lindsay liked to do, and she’d cross-referenced them half a dozen times. She even made sure that they were _honest_ lists, that she wrote down what Lindsay actually liked to do now and not what Leslie thought Lindsay should like doing, or what Lindsay liked to do last year.

The problem with these lists was that Leslie couldn’t figure out exactly how they fit with the list of stuff that _she_ wanted to do. Clearly lists alone weren’t going to solve this problem. Or maybe lists were just the wrong format. So she’d plotted out a bunch of Venn diagrams, and those proved it.

There just isn’t any common ground between her, Lindsay, and Ann.

It might be time to give up, she thinks, letting herself be momentarily distracted by this one kid who’s apparently trying to run around the lake fifty times before dinner. She’d only be giving up temporarily, of course. Leslie would never give up on a project entirely, especially not one that was so important. But it might be time to put this one aside for a while and get to work on her plans for the field hockey league instead.

And she still has a terrible headache. The circus music seriously will not stop. She moves on to field hockey anyway.

She’s in the middle of organizing the summer’s-end championship tournament (six teams, double elimination) when a group of boys approaches from the direction of the all-purpose sports field. Mark Brendanawicz is one of them. Ugh, why does he have to be everywhere?

“Hey, Leslie Knope!” yells a familiar voice that isn’t Mark’s. She looks up and recognizes Andy, too, and that weird J.R. kid from her science class. The other three she doesn’t know. One of them is the jogger. Whatever, they’re still far away and she doesn’t care right now.

“Hey, Andy,” she calls back, unenthusiastically. But Andy is waving madly at her, and dragging the other guys over to introduce them or something, so she gathers up all her Venn diagrams and tournament guidelines, and stuffs them back into her empty binder so no one will see them and ask her dumb questions.

“You weren’t in the bunk when we stopped by,” says Andy.

“No, I was here.” Why won’t they just go away?

“Whatcha doing?” he asks. “Secret stuff?”

“She has been working very diligently on something for literally the entire time I’ve been working out,” says one of the guys she doesn’t know, the jogger. He points at her head. “Leslie Knope? Chris Traeger.”

“Yeah, hi,” she says, nonplussed. He looks like a Ken doll, Leslie thinks, only with darker hair. Why is his jaw so chiseled? Why is he pointing at her head? He strikes her as very strange.

“Leslie, these are my bunkmates!” exclaims Andy, plopping down on the bench next to her. “Well, you already know Mark and J.R., but that’s Darwish and Ben.” He indicates the two shorter boys, a preppy Indian kid and a slightly nerdy looking one who she thinks might be kind of cute if he didn’t have such a weird expression on his face. Is he trying to disappear or something? No, maybe he’s just perplexed by Chris. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. “Guys, Leslie goes to our school,” Andy continues. “She’s super smart.”

“Hey,” she says, trying (and failing) to muster up a little enthusiasm. She honestly doesn’t feel the slightest bit intelligent this afternoon, what with her inability to figure out friendships.

“We’re going up to dinner,” says Andy. “Wanna come with us?”

“No,” sighs Leslie, “go ahead. I want to put this stuff back in my cabin first.”

“I…will come with you,” says Mark, which makes no sense, until they’ve split off from the rest of the boys and Mark starts asking questions.

About Ann.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

“No, I don’t think she has a boyfriend,” Leslie sighs for the fifth time as they climb up the steps to the mess hall.

“Leslie Knope! Mark Brendanawicz!” says an enthusiastic voice as soon as they walk in the door.

“Hi, Chris,” says Leslie. Seriously, why is he pointing at her again?

Ann appears out of nowhere, grabs Leslie’s arm, and drags her off to the side. “Leslie, you know that guy?”

She shrugs. “I met him, like, five minutes ago. Why?”

“Um,” says Ann, like this should be obvious, “because he’s really, really hot.”

“Hey, Ann,” says Mark, suddenly appearing behind Leslie, along with that Darwish kid.

“Mark, want to come sit with us?” says Lindsay, shoving Ann aside and pointing at an empty seat next to Joan.

“Seriously, Leslie, can you introduce me to him?” Ann whispers into Leslie’s ear.

Leslie thinks she might cry.

“I’m gonna go grab a burger,” she mutters, pushing her way through hordes of younger kids swarming the buffet line. Ugh, there are way too many younger kids swarming the buffet line. She ducks outside instead and heads straight for the grill, relieved to see her favorite counselor back, and not only because he cooks the best hamburgers Leslie’s ever eaten.

“Leslie,” says Ron, tipping his spatula to her. “Burger or hot dog?”

“Hi, Ron,” she mutters. “Burger, please.”

She’s about to ask if she can just sit out here with him—she knows Ron won’t want to have any stupid conversations about nothing, he’ll just be quiet and maybe her headache will go away. But of course he doesn’t have any condiments outside, just a giant stack of meat, so she has to go back inside for ketchup.

That nerdy kid from Andy’s cabin is standing at the condiments table. He actually is pretty cute, Leslie thinks, but he’s definitely weird, and not just because he’s wearing a very bright green and orange plaid shirt. She can see his plate pretty clearly, and he’s put mustard, lettuce, and a tomato slice on his burger, which is borderline offensive—Leslie, like all right-thinking individuals, only ever uses ketchup.

It suddenly flashes in her mind that if he turns around, he’s probably going to try to talk to her. And she knows—she _knows_ he’s new here and probably doesn’t know anyone, knows she ought to be nice, but she just doesn’t think she has it in her right now. So she puts her head down, plows past him, hastily squirts some ketchup on her burger, and navigates her way back outside, to sit with Ron.

No one notices that she’s not at dinner. No one even notices that she skips the campfire and s’mores, apparently, considering that neither Ann nor Lindsay mentions it when they finally return to the bunk later that night.

A few minutes after lights out, Ann leans over the edge of the top bunk. “Hey, Leslie,” she whispers, “which of those guys was your idiot pen pal?”

“Why do you care?” she snaps, much too loudly, before she can stop herself.

“Whoa, just wondering,” says Ann. “You don’t have to bite my head off.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Leslie groans. “I still have a headache, Ann, do you have any Advil?”

“I _did_ ,” she replies, “but Tammy confiscated it so I wouldn’t _overdose_.”

“Medication can only be dispensed by the counselors and the nurse, Leslie,” says Lindsay, lisping slightly through her retainer. “I thought you’d been to this camp before. Don’t you know anything?”

“It’s just _Advil_ ,” snaps Ann.

And there they go again, or at least, there they go until Tammy comes in and shushes Ann for talking after lights out. Lindsay doesn’t get in trouble, somehow.

Tomorrow will be better, Leslie tells herself. Tomorrow will be better, tomorrow will be better, tomorrow will be better…

Wait a minute. Which one of those guys _was_ her pen pal?

Field hockey plans first, she thinks. And the talent show. And fixing Lindsay. Those things are more important, or at least they should be. Then she’ll figure it out.

***

Ben wakes up five times during his first night at camp and congratulates himself on only one of those disturbances, the first one, being due to a Cindy-related nightmare. He wakes up three times when Chris gets up to pee (even though Chris is on the bottom bunk, he gets up very… _enthusiastically_ ).

The fifth time is at 4:30 in the morning, and everyone wakes up then.

“Top of the morning!” bellows Ron, banging open the cabin door. The light suddenly clicks on, and Ben reaches to the bedpost for his glasses, blinking. He thinks he sees a floppy hat.

“What the hell, man?” yells Darwish. “It’s Saturday. And it’s summer.”

“I am obliged to offer to perform activities with you,” says Ron, slowly coming into focus. He is indeed wearing a fishing outfit, including thigh-high rubber boots, and carrying a tackle box. “This morning’s activity is fishing. I leave for the river in precisely three minutes. If anyone wants to participate, I’ll be outside. Bring your tackle boxes. I will provide the bait.” He stomps outside, banging the front door shut behind him.

Absolutely no one gets up by 4:33, not even Chris.

They get to sleep for exactly ninety minutes longer, until Chris turns the lights on at 6:00 and begins chucking full water bottles at them.

“Chris, what the hell are you doing?” yawns Mark, ducking.

“The conditioning drills that we talked about yesterday,” says Chris, eagerly. “You should all start drinking now. Hydration is very important.”

There’s a loud chorus of swearing and complaining, but somehow Chris convinces everyone to get up, and they’re all out of the door within twenty minutes. Ben feels completely ridiculous as Chris begins guiding them through a series of hamstring stretches on the stretch of lawn behind the cabins. But damn it, it’s not like they don’t do this at every baseball practice anyway, and he just promised himself yesterday morning that he’s going to stop being embarrassed by everything.

Besides, he can’t possibly look more ridiculous than J.R. does, he thinks, as Chris leads them down by the lake for wind sprints. And no one’s awake to see them.

Wait, someone is awake. It’s that short blonde girl, the pretty one who knocked him aside to get the ketchup last night. She’s already back at her picnic table, with what looks like an enormous stack of paperwork. She certainly is focused, Ben thinks; whatever it is she’s doing, she’s putting a tremendous amount of _effort_ into it. Chris is shouting encouragement at all of them (while running backwards), Andy’s laughing hysterically, Darwish and J.R. have been whining loudly from practically the moment they started, and she doesn’t look up at all, as far as he can tell.

Well, she does once, forty-five minutes into the workout, when Andy starts vomiting into the bushes. Ben can’t really blame her for looking annoyed at that. He watches her gather up all her belongings and storm into the rec building, glaring at all of them in turn as she goes, her blonde pigtails gleaming in the early morning sunlight.

Not that he’s noticing girls, because he isn’t.

Ben honestly hadn’t thought he was in such terrible shape, but after an hour or so with Chris, he is seriously reconsidering his fitness level.

“This is insane,” gasps Mark, dripping with sweat.

“You’re all doing great!” Chris calls out, beaming. He must not have noticed that Darwish and J.R. quit twenty minutes into the wind sprints, or that Andy is on his second round of puking, or that Ben and Mark are barely upright. “I’m going to get in another mile or two before breakfast,” he says. “We’ll continue this tomorrow.”

“If we’re still alive,” Ben mutters, taking off his glasses so that he can mop his forehead. God, even his glasses are sweaty.

“No shit,” says Mark, removing his shirt and fanning himself with it.

Ben feels pretty great for the rest of the morning, though, especially after he’s taken a much-needed shower and checked in to make sure Jess is okay (she’s already up to her eyeballs in plastic lanyards, and tells him to go away).

“Endorphins!” explains Chris when he jogs into the mess hall for breakfast, a handful of girls trailing behind him. He still isn’t sweaty at all. “You should probably drink more water.”

Ben, Mark, Andy, and Chris spend the rest of their morning drawing up plans for a camp-wide baseball league. Mark has made the very good point that there just aren’t enough fourteen-year-olds to field two full teams, even if they go co-ed, and that even if everyone in camp participates, three teams will still be a stretch. Andy volunteers to Rollerblade from cabin to cabin, gauging interest, and soon after he leaves, they get a stream of kids stopping by their table to ask when they’re going to start playing.

Eventually they agree on something sort of resembling a league, with a couple of co-ed, all-ages teams and a tentative plan for tryouts and drafts. Some of the kinks will have to be worked out as they go, but there are enough old gloves in the equipment shed to cover anyone who didn’t bring their own, and it seems like they’ll be able to play a couple of innings every day even if attendance varies.

“Last thing,” says Mark. “Who’s in charge of each team?”

“You and Ben each take one,” says Andy instantly, and Chris concurs.

“Cool,” says Mark. “You okay with that, Ben?”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, and just like that, he’s a manager, apparently.

“So we just need to clear this with Jerry and get permission to use the field every day,” says Mark. “You’ve still got the inventory list from the equipment shed, right?”

“Right here,” says Ben, holding it up.

It’s probably just the endorphins talking, but he thinks he might love this camp.

***


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

 

Leslie thinks she might hate this camp.

“You’re not going back to the picnic table by yourself,” says Ann at lunch on Saturday. “You’ve spent _hours_ down there, Leslie. Come swimming with me.”

Okay, so that should be fun. But she feels really weird walking around in front of people in the bikini even with a towel wrapped around her, and it turns out that Ann’s mostly using “swimming” as code for “suntanning and possibly waiting for Chris to jog by and notice her.” Apparently Ann’s forgotten that Leslie doesn’t tan, she burns. Not to mention that she’s already a little pink from her aborted nap the day before.

So she goes in the water by herself, using the opportunity to test _exactly_ how good this bikini top is at not popping open. It seems pretty sturdy, actually.

She’s bobbing along in the water, up to her shoulders, when the boys arrive. Ann starts waving her back to shore, and she pretends not to notice for a few minutes. Are the boys just traveling in a giant pack now? They must be. Mark, J.R., and Andy are trying to dunk each other (even from here, she can see that J.R. is losing horribly), Darwish is yelling something and gesturing alternately at his swimsuit and a patch of pond scum, and…where’s the last one, the one that’s actually kind of cute? Ben, she thinks his name is.

Eventually she spots him, kneeling on the shore with a few girls, really small girls who look like they’re about ten, and what’s he doing? Handing them a bottle of sunscreen? She swims a little bit closer. Oh, one of them must be his sister, they look almost exactly alike.

By the time Leslie gets back to shore, Chris and Ann are deep in some conversation about backstroke techniques, and nobody even notices that she’s there, which means nobody will notice if she leaves either. She just flings her towel over her shoulder and grabs her sandals and storms back to the cabins barefoot. She doesn’t even care about the stupid bathing suit anymore.

Ann, to her credit, apologizes for that at dinner, and this time Leslie agrees to stay for the campfire, but she still doesn’t feel like talking to anybody. She leaves kind of early and gets in about an hour of planning before Marcia comes back. Neither of them says anything, but Leslie can feel Marcia glaring at her every time her pencil scratches the paper, so she gives up for the night and reads Ann’s magazine until Tammy turns the lights out. So far, she thinks, this isn’t going right.

On Sunday morning, Leslie actually wants to sleep late (well, late for her), but Lindsay wakes her up at six.

“Why?” Leslie moans, looking for her sandals.

“Wear tennis shoes,” Lindsay commands.

Oh. They’re awake at six and wearing tennis shoes because they’re going to go down by the lake and work out with the boys. She wants to ask “Since when do you like exercise?” but she can’t even remember the last time Lindsay wanted to do something with her, so she bites her tongue.

When they get down to the lake, Mark asks what they’re doing there, Chris points at their heads and says “Leslie Knope! Lindsay Carlisle!” like he’s never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life, and Ben looks faintly amused for about half a second, before he goes back to staring at his own feet. Lindsay drags Leslie off to stand near Mark.

Fifteen minutes into stretching, she hears Chris call “Ann Perkins!” in an equally enthusiastic tone.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” whispers Ann, sidling next to Leslie.

“What are you doing here?” Leslie whispers back, because she can’t think of an answer to Ann’s question.

“Chris invited me,” says Ann, beaming.

“Great,” says Leslie, even though it isn’t great at all, she’s supposed to be spending time with Lindsay now. And then the running starts, which is kind of miserable, because Leslie has never seen the point in just running for the sake of running. Neither Lindsay nor Ann is paying attention to her anyway. She ducks behind a bush (she tries not to get too close to it; she thinks it’s the bush Andy threw up in yesterday) and goes back to the cabin. No one notices she’s gone, of course.

By Sunday afternoon, she’s spent almost fifteen hours total writing up plans for her field hockey league and her talent show, and she thinks they’re pretty good. Not that that matters. The first thing she discovers when she goes to Jerry to pitch her ideas is that Jerry actually has plans for the talent show this year. Like, directing it himself plans.

“I’d be happy to have you as a junior director, Leslie,” he says, like that’s a title that means anything.

“But you never want to do anything with the talent show,” Leslie says, and yes, she’s aware that she’s whining right now. But it’s true, he’s always let either the campers or the counselors do everything before. “All you ever lead is art classes.”

“We,” says Jerry, beaming proudly, “got a new piano this year.” He gestures to it. It isn’t new at all. It’s new to camp, she supposes, and that must be enough to get Jerry excited. “So I’m going to direct and perform in a musical tribute to famous pianists.”

This is a bad idea for so many reasons, Leslie knows. For one, Jerry is bound to mispronounce “pianist” in a very wrong way at least once during the performance, which will be in front of all the parents on the last day of camp. For another, no one is going to care about famous pianists. But she accepts the junior director title anyway, because it’s better than nothing, and agrees to canvass the camp and bully kids into auditioning, which is usually the most challenging part. So there, she’ll have something to do for at least an hour every morning, possibly longer if Jerry will let her extend the rehearsals.

Her field hockey league plans don’t go over so well either. The boys have already commandeered the all-purpose sports field, and reserved it for pretty much every hour of every day. Well, no. Only three hours a day, but they’re the _best_ hours. Jerry can’t give her a reasonable explanation for this at _all_ , and eventually he just tells her that they’re going to have to work it out on their own.

She finds Mark down at the field, which he insists on calling a baseball diamond much to her chagrin, and begins to pitch her idea. But Mark seems to think that baseball is more important than field hockey, just because they got there first and maybe half the camp wants to play baseball (including Ann and Lindsay, who are both wearing mitts and playing catch with Andy and a bunch of the younger kids, what the hell) and Leslie’s completely on her own.

“Leslie, I don’t want to argue about this,” says Mark after about five minutes, and he proves it, by passing her off to Chris.

Well, now she’s just angry. Who does Mark think he is, that he can just act like they don’t have anything to discuss here?

“I understand what you’re saying, Leslie,” says Chris, cutting her off before she’s even half finished with her explanation, which has gotten very loud, “but I don’t know if there’s anything we can do.” He looks around. “Ben, is there anything we can do?”

“I—what’s going on?” says Ben, who’s wearing a t-shirt and a baseball cap today, like a normal person.

“Can you work this out with Leslie?” asks Chris, clapping Ben on the back. “Thanks, buddy.” He jogs off.

Leslie thinks she sees a twinge of irritation there, like he doesn’t appreciate being called “buddy,” but it passes. “Hi,” he says. “Is there a problem?”

“Are you in charge here?” she asks.

He looks around, a little perplexed, like he’s expecting to see someone else, and shrugs. “I guess,” he says, adjusting his Twins hat. “No one’s really in charge, we’re just—”

“Sit down,” orders Leslie, plopping down on the grass. He does. “This,” Leslie informs him, “is my plan for forming a field hockey league, which I think you’ll agree is a very thorough and comprehensive plan, but one that I can’t carry out, because _you guys_ have the field reserved for baseball for pretty much every minute of every day.” She should probably try not to sound so angry right away, she thinks, and takes a deep breath as she hands Ben her binder.

He shakes his head, and puts down the binder without looking at it. “Um, why do I need to read this?” he asks. “We only have the field booked from one to four. There are at least five other hours you could—”

“No, I couldn’t,” Leslie interrupts, “because in the morning I’m doing talent show rehearsals, and open swim is from three to five and no one ever shows up for activities that start during open swim.”

“Okay. Well, there’s still from five to six—”

“No, that isn’t enough time! Field hockey games are seventy-five minutes, including halftime, and dinner is at six exactly.”

Ben takes off his hat and scratches his head, looking perplexed. “Are you—are you planning to play an entire regulation-length game every single day?”

“Yes, of course,” says Leslie. Why wouldn’t she be planning that? “And more on weekends. I want to have mini-tournaments.”

“Okay,” says Ben. “How many people are going to be involved? I don’t know anything about field hockey.”

“Of course you don’t,” Leslie mutters. “Eleven players per side, so at least twenty-two people every day.”

“And how many teams?”

“Six. At least six. What does that have to do with the field?” God, he is really not understanding what’s going on here.

“Nothing,” he says, “but Leslie, is field hockey really that popular? We only have thirty-something kids who want to play baseball, and it’s not like this camp is all that big.”

“It will be that popular,” she says, “once I get the word out.”

“So you’re telling me,” he says, “that sixty-six kids, or no I guess you really only need twenty-two if nobody minds sharing—are you telling me that twenty-two kids came to this camp with field hockey equipment? Not that many even brought baseball gloves, and those are easier to pack.”

There’s a sinking feeling in her chest.

“And there isn’t any field hockey stuff in the equipment shed,” he continues. “We did an inventory the other day—it’s just that baseball stuff that’s on the field now, three deflated soccer balls, one inflated soccer ball, and a few Frisbees.”

“That—that doesn’t have anything to do with the field, you jerk!” she shouts, irritated. Why does he have to recite precisely what’s in the shed, like an inventory robot? Just because there’s no field hockey stuff—oh, crap. Suddenly, she remembers that the camp rules for field hockey follow the county school district rules, which require mouth guards for everyone. You can’t share mouth guards, and she definitely doesn’t have sixty-six mouth guards. She doesn’t even have twenty-two mouth guards. She has two—hers, and her backup.

“Yeah, it does, because you can’t play if you don’t have equipment. And stop yelling at me. I didn’t create this problem, Leslie—” he says, raising his voice a little. He has to, because she’s shouting at him now, yelling about how it isn’t fair and how executive power is supposed to work but Jerry screwed it up, and she isn’t a criminal here and she ought to have a right to a fair trial, and oh crap, this is starting to sound like a social studies class report, isn’t it?

Ben just waits until she finishes, staring at her as though she’s completely insane. She probably does sound that way, but…no, she isn’t insane, just passionate. Right?

She stops yelling, finally, and Ben shakes his head a little bit, like there’s water in his ears or something.

“Leslie, I don’t care about the field, we can move the times around if we need to,” he says. “But there’s no point in us changing all of our plans when you don’t even know if you can put a single team together—hang on.” The little girl that Leslie thinks must be his sister is limping over to him, sobbing hysterically, with a trickle of blood running down her leg. “I think it’s just a scrape, Jess,” he tells her, “but we should get that cleaned up.”

“It _hurts_ ,” says Jess, wiping away a tear.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “But you’ll be okay. Let’s go.” He turns back to Leslie. “Look, when you figure everything out, let me know. Okay?”

“Do you even know where the infirmary is?” she asks, and what she _means_ is that he’s new and she isn’t and she’ll walk them over there, but it comes out like she’s accusing him of being too dumb to know where anything is. Crap.

“It’s on other side of the rec building,” Ben says, pulling his hat back on. He stands up, takes his sister’s hand. “Come on, Jess.”

After they’re gone, Leslie takes a deep breath, tries to calm herself. She looks through her binder. These plans might be a little…ambitious. But she can fix them. She can make cuts. They could play six-a-side instead of eleven; she’d only need to convince Jerry to buy twelve sticks and sets of pads—well, no, maybe more pads than that, they’d need different sizes—okay, this might work.

She glances up at the field. Granted, Lindsay and Ann are nowhere near each other, but they both look like they’re enjoying themselves. Didn’t Ann used to be in Little League? She thinks so. Of course Ann is having fun. She and Chris are trying to teach some of the younger kids to bunt, it looks like. Lindsay is sorting bats, or something, and laughing, and it’s been a while since Leslie’s seen Lindsay laugh.

And, much as it pains her to admit it, neither Lindsay nor Ann is going to want to play field hockey.

So maybe she needs to reevaluate this baseball thing. Especially since she has not forgotten that her pen pal plays second base. She has not forgotten that at all.

Actually, that might be a good way to figure out who he is. That article said she should try to share his interests. If _she_ tries to play second base too…he might try to take the position back from her. Even if he doesn’t, presumably he’s going to be among the group of kids hanging out here every day…

Yes, that’s a great idea. She’ll figure out who he is _and_ she’ll impress him with her knowledge of baseball. Just because she doesn’t particularly like baseball doesn’t mean she doesn’t know anything about it, of course.

Plus, if she’s going to fight them for the field later, it might be useful to have some inside information on what actually goes on here. It’ll be very sneaky of her.

“Hey, Andy,” she yells, jogging onto the field, “can I get a glove?”

***  
Ben is almost glad—well, no, of course he’s not glad that Jess scraped her knee, but it is obviously just a scrape, and he was definitely glad that he’d gotten an excuse to get up from that conversation, or whatever it was.

What he doesn’t understand at _all_ is why Leslie had gotten so angry at him, when he hadn’t actually told her no. In fact, except for her crazy ideas about how many kids would want to participate (and how _much_ they’d want to participate, and how much stuff she thought they might have brought), he’d thought she was making a lot of sense. She certainly had just as much right to use the field for field hockey at a convenient time as they had to use it for baseball, at least. He actually did want to help her.

No, he’d just been trying to approach the situation in a rational manner, with logical questions like did anybody actually want to play, and then she had derailed the whole thing by bringing in the Bill of Rights and turning their rational conversation into an onslaught. An onslaught that he’s pretty sure wasn’t his fault, and that he’s pretty sure he didn’t deserve, because he _didn’t_ create any of her problems. How did that make him a jerk, exactly? He didn’t have any idea she even liked field hockey. She’d never mentioned field hockey in any of her letters.

Oh, yeah, he’s pretty sure now that Leslie is his pen pal.

She has to be. Because he’s pretty sure that only a girl who wanted to be president would decide that the Bill of Rights was appropriate support for an argument about a sports field. She hadn’t just been vaguely invoking the concepts; she’d actually been quoting passages of the document at him, which he’s pretty sure she did without even realizing it.

Should he tell her? He should tell her. But…not yet. Because there’s still the possibility that it’s a coincidence. Maybe she just read the Bill of Rights for school or something, and it stuck.

No, he thinks, as Jess emerges from the infirmary with a giant Band-Aid on her knee, he ought to be cautious here. He should bide his time, try to spend more time around her, collect more evidence. He also ought to try to keep her from guessing that he’s…who he is, if she hasn’t already.

Ben promptly resolves to stop quoting _Star Wars_ , as part of his summer self-improvement project.

Jess insists on running up to the mess hall for Popsicles before they return to the sports field, which is really not a bad idea.

Then again, he might be wrong about everything. That would actually seem more likely. Maybe he should hope it isn’t her. Maybe he should forget, completely, about the idea of figuring out who his pen pal is. It had been almost three days, after all. She’s probably already figured out who he is, and decided it wasn’t worth revealing herself, and decided to spare him the humiliation. Or she’s saving the information to humiliate him at a later date.

God, why does his mind always have to go straight to the worst-case scenario?

It might be hard to spend more time around Leslie, he thinks, trying not to drip orange everywhere. She seems to disappear a lot—from pretty much every meal, from the lake yesterday, from their workout that morning—come to think of it, she disappears pretty much every time she notices him anywhere, which is not an encouraging sign.

And she doesn’t always seem happy to be around people when she isn’t disappearing. Whenever he’d tried to imagine the girl from the letters, she had been…well, a little bit nuts. But he’d also imagined that she would be friendly, and thoughtful, and generally pretty happy, and so far, Leslie has not been any of those things. Or at least, she hasn’t been any of those things around him.

“Ready to go back to the field?” he asks Jess when they’re done with the Popsicles, and she nods.

Leslie is really pretty, though.

And she’s still _there_. When he and Jess get back to the sports field, Leslie is there, at second base, taking fielding practice.

“Hey, guys!” calls Andy, who’s shagging ground balls. “Leslie’s gonna play with us.”

“Okay…” Ben replies, uncertainly. He’d expected her to come back with a revised field hockey proposal, to be honest. He turns to her and calls, “I didn’t know you played baseball.”

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” says Leslie. She’s found eye black somewhere and it’s all over her face. There’s even a little bit in her pigtails. He can’t read her expression at all. It might be a grimace.

“So are you giving up on field hockey?” Ben asks, kind of afraid of her answer.

“Only temporarily,” she says. “This is just until I talk Jerry into buying equipment. Then I’ll beat you.”

Oh boy.

He grabs his glove from the bleachers and heads out to shortstop, feeling Leslie’s gaze on him the entire time.

“So you’re a shortstop?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.

Good lord. He can’t possibly look that out of place, can he? “Yes,” he says stubbornly, and proves it by fielding everything perfectly, even the tricky grounders and a pop fly that he’d had to catch over his shoulder.

She does not look impressed. Actually, she’s glaring at him. So, okay, she just doesn’t like him. Fair enough. He’ll get over it.

An hour or so later, while they’re cleaning up, he notices her field hockey binder on the bleachers. He glances around. Leslie’s talking to Ann, and her back is to him. Should he look? He shouldn’t snoop in her stuff, he knows that. But she _had_ tried to get him to read it earlier…

He flips the cover open, and it’s like someone’s punched him square in the gut.

Not only would he recognize that handwriting anywhere, the plans are all written on a combination of Lisa Frank penguin stationery and Pawnee municipal government letterhead.

***

“Leslie, are you actually reading that magazine?” asks Ann, sounding vaguely amused. She’s on the floor, painting her toenails, while Leslie sits on the bottom bunk.

“What?” Leslie replies, looking up. “Oh, yeah. Do you want it back?”

“No, keep it, I already read it,” says Ann. They and Donna are the only ones in the cabin right now. It’s the weird time between dinner and lights out when no one knows exactly what to do. Jerry’s decided to show a movie in the rec building tonight—it’s _Meatballs_ , of course it’s _Meatballs_ , Jerry has no imagination and is way too literal with his film selections—and since Leslie and Ann have both seen _Meatballs_ at least three times a summer for the past few summers, they’re skipping it. “I thought you hated those. You keep telling me they’re demeaning.”

“Eh,” says Leslie, trying to sound noncommittal. But there is something she’s been meaning to ask Ann about this magazine. “Hey, Ann?” she says. “Does this actually work, the stuff they tell you to do with boys?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like, sharing interests and playing hard to get,” says Leslie, fidgeting a little, because she can’t show Ann the article, she’s made all sorts of notes in the margins. She should probably tear out the pages while Ann isn’t looking, just in case Ann does decide to read it again.

“Leslie,” says Ann, slowly, “Are you actually interested in someone?”

Crap. “No, I’m not. I was just wondering.”

Ann doesn’t seem convinced, but she doesn’t make a big deal out of it. “Yeah, it works,” she says.

“Really? It’s not just easier to tell someone you like them?”

“You can’t just say you like someone,” interjects Donna. “That’s desperate. You know what happens to desperate women.”

“No,” says Leslie.

“‘Use her, abuse her, and lose her,’ according to my brother Levondrius. Whom I hate,” says Donna. Crap. That’s a frightening prospect.

“But you do have to hang out with him, or else he won’t notice you,” adds Ann.

“Oh.” Leslie guesses that makes sense. “So what do you do when you’re hanging out, then?”

Ann fans her toenails and shrugs. “Oh, you know. Just don’t make it really obvious that you like him. Don’t, like, agree with everything he says.”

“That’s what Lindsay’s doing wrong with Mark,” says Donna, wisely. “She’s practically throwing herself on that boy, and he is not about to buy it. Men like a challenge.”

“Ugh,” says Ann, stretching out a foot. “Mark is so annoying.”

“He wants to get with you,” says Donna.

“Yeah, I know,” groans Ann. “He’s practically stalking me. It’s so lame.”

“What about you and that bionic kid?” asks Donna. Leslie has no idea how Donna, who barely knows Ann, is comfortable asking her all these personal questions about boys, but Ann doesn’t seem to think anything is weird about it at all.

“Nothing yet,” says Ann, “but he did look disappointed when I left before the movie tonight.”

Leslie sits up all the way, closes the magazine. “Ann? Have you…you know…”

“Have I what?” asks Ann, looking suspicious.

“Have you—have you kissed anyone yet?” Leslie blurts out, blushing.

“Oh,” says Ann, laughing a little. “I thought you were going to ask if I’d had sex.”

“No. Wait, have you?”

“Of course not!” says Ann. “But yeah, I’ve made out with a couple—hang on, I thought you knew that.”

Knew what? What is she supposed to have known?

“Um, I thought you probably had, but—”

“Leslie,” says Ann, looking slightly astounded, “did you really hang out with me all last summer without realizing I was making out with Andy?”

Holy crap.

“You _what_? No, I did not know that, Ann, you never told me.”

“Yeah, because it was obvious. Everyone knew. I mean, it was only for like a week, but—”

Ann’s explanation goes on for a while longer, but it’s not really registering with Leslie. She feels the slightest bit betrayed. Not that she’d ever wanted to kiss Andy, of course she hadn’t, but how could she not have realized…and even if she should have realized, why hadn’t Ann told her? Wasn’t that the sort of thing best friends did? (She might be conveniently forgetting certain things that she isn’t telling Ann right now. But those are different, because nothing’s happened.)

“…so it was fun for a while, but I dumped him after the food fight and he smelled like mashed potatoes for two days straight. He’s just so _immature_ ,” Ann finishes.

Leslie stares at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ann shrugs. “One, I thought you knew, and two, it wasn’t that big a deal. It’s not like Andy’s the only guy I’ve ever dated. This stuff just happens, you know?”

“Not to everyone,” Leslie says, quietly. She didn’t mean to, it just slipped out.

Ann and Donna just look at each other for a while.

“Leslie,” says Ann, finally, “you really haven’t made out with a boy yet?”

“No,” she admits. Ann and Donna both look kind of incredulous. “What? I just haven’t wanted to. There’s nothing wrong with waiting for—for something.”

“Of course there isn’t, it’ll happen when it happens,” says Ann, reassuringly. Donna might be stifling a laugh, but she doesn’t actually say anything. “Although,” Ann continues, looking suddenly mischievous and grinning at Donna, “now I have to ask—if you _were_ going to make out with someone here, Leslie, who would it be?”

Crap. Crap crap crap. “No one! Seriously, Ann, there’s no one here I like,” says Leslie, blushing furiously.

She’s so lying.

She thinks she might want to make out with Ben. Well, she really wants to make out with her pen pal, but since he’s refusing to reveal himself, Ben is the next best choice. (Is Ben her pen pal? He’s not from Pawnee, she knows that, and he is a little bit nerdy. He’s definitely number one on her list of people who might be her pen pal. She hopes he is; that would solve a lot of her problems.)

But she’s not ready to admit any of that to herself yet, let alone anyone else.

Over the next few days, everyone settles into a kind of routine, and it’s not exactly what Leslie wanted, but she finally feels like her feet are back under her. Practically the whole camp is waking up early for Chris’s insane morning workouts now, either to participate (although no one can make it to the end) or just to watch. Lindsay gives up on even trying to do the exercises by Tuesday, and Leslie never wanted to go in the first place, so they spend most early mornings at Leslie’s favorite picnic table, watching. Well, Lindsay watches. Leslie usually reads, or, if Ron isn’t fishing, she practices self-defense with him (he started teaching her last summer). She and Lindsay aren’t talking much, and when they are it’s usually about Mark, but at least they’re spending time together.

After breakfast, Leslie heads over to talent show rehearsals, which are going surprisingly well. She’s managed to talk Jerry into expanding his pianist tribute into a sort of general musical show. It actually wasn’t that hard because, as she’d expected, none of the campers were interested in classical piano, and he’s already mispronounced “pianist” in terrible ways in front of both the nine- and eleven-year-olds.

Instead, they have a huge group of younger kids doing an extended Disney medley, and she, Darwish, and J.R. are going to do a rap number, although they still haven’t decided exactly what it’s going to be. J.R. is insisting that he can write something amazing, but he seems to have some issues with rhymes. Leslie thinks they should maybe stick with “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” especially since they’re going to perform in front of parents—but heck, it’s practically her talent show, maybe she’ll just give them two performance slots. Andy swears he’s going to have a band together in time, and if not, he’ll perform by himself. He’s already written a song, too. It only has three chords (because Andy only knows three chords), but it’s about Li’l Sebastian, so everyone (from Pawnee, anyway) will love it even if the lyrics are a little odd; miniature horses don’t have wings, after all.

It’s the afternoons and evenings that are perplexing, because even though Ann swore everything in the article works, Leslie simply cannot figure out how to get Ben to notice her. She’s showing up to baseball every day and playing as hard as she can, and it actually is a lot of fun even though she’s not all that good at it. They usually spend an hour or so as a big group, doing fielding and hitting drills, before splitting into two teams and playing a few innings. The only real consistency is that Mark and Andy are always on one team and Chris and Ben are always on the other, so Leslie makes it a point to play on Ben’s team.

She’s not just playing, either. She’s trying as hard as she can to be interested in everything going on in the games, to suggest alternate hitting strategies and pitching matchups and defensive alignments, even though Chris keeps pointing out that they’re just playing for fun and exercise, and trying to correct her swing using words like “torque” and “biomechanics.” Sometimes it turns into yelling at Ben—okay, most days it turns into yelling at Ben—but yelling is part of sports, isn’t it? You yell to show how much you care. She knows how this works.

Maybe she needs to start yelling more loudly.

Most days, everyone heads to the lake for open swim after baseball, which is no less frustrating. It’s like Ben is going out of his way to avoid her. Half the time he brings his book to the lake (it’s _Lord of the Rings_ , which is fantasy, not science fiction) and doesn’t even go in the water. But, whatever, she’ll just have fun because she isn’t supposed to be too obvious about liking him anyway. Plus, as she knows from last year, the lake is always fun when Andy’s around for dunkings and water fights. (She still can’t believe Ann made out with him for a week without her knowing, especially considering that Andy isn’t subtle and she just spent a whole school year with him, although they weren’t in any of the same classes. That thought continues to blow her mind on an almost hourly basis.)

Since Ron doesn’t give a crap what goes on at night and for some reason Tammy stopped caring too, cabin six automatically becomes the party cabin, and pretty much everyone who can fit inside does. Andy’s got a stash of junk food under his mattress, Darwish has a portable CD player and about a hundred CDs, and most nights everyone just hangs out in there after the campfire’s over, listening to music and talking about nothing. It smells a little funny, but she supposes that’s to be expected with all the boys living in there.

Leslie’s always there, sitting next to either Ann or Lindsay most nights even though she feels kind of weird around both of them now, doing just what the magazine suggests—not being obvious about whom she’s there to see and talking to other guys as much as possible, which is actually pretty easy since she likes most of the people there. She plays card games with Andy and practices rapping with Darwish and J.R. and has friendly arguments with Chris about how much candy is too much. She doesn’t have a whole lot to say to Mark, but she’s doing a little bit better at not blaming him for all of the problems between her and Lindsay, she thinks, even though they’re still mostly his fault.

It’s really easy not to pay too much attention to Ben. In fact, it’s really easy not to pay him any attention at all. He’s always _there_ , but he’s usually up in his bunk, reading his giant book and not saying a whole lot even when they run out of floor space and someone winds up sitting in the bunk with him. (Leslie makes sure she never goes up there. That would just be weird.) Every so often, she catches him staring at her, but he never says anything, so she doesn’t either.

She still hasn’t figured out what at camp is boring, let alone how to make it fun. Maybe when their first aid class starts next week, it’ll be boring and she’ll figure out how to make it fun. If he’s even signed up for that class. He might not be.

And she still hasn’t figured out why her pen pal hasn’t revealed himself, because she thought he’d—okay, it sounds a little crazy even to her, but she really thought he’d understood her, and liked her, based on those letters. He’d complimented her writing and agreed that penguins were cute and he’d even sent her that speech.

So clearly, something is wrong here. Maybe it’s that she isn’t quite as developed as the other girls. She feels very left behind in that department, sometimes. (Leslie had caught sight of one of Donna’s bras earlier in the week, and it was _terrifying_.) Maybe she should try to look older.

She digs around in her socks, finds the lip gloss Ann made her buy, and starts wearing it semi-regularly, whenever she remembers to put it on. She abandons her pigtails, and gets Ann to French braid her hair instead.

Nothing happens.

Well, on Thursday morning, used condoms start appearing behind the bathrooms. One would be bad enough, but this is like a staggering quantity of used condoms, even Leslie knows that.

And on Saturday, Mark Brendanawicz tries to shove his tongue down her throat.

***


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

_Dear Mom and Dad, but especially Mom,_

_Was there something you forgot to tell me about social interactions? I know it’s been a while since you were a teenager, Mom, and I know I said I was too embarrassed to talk about girls with you, but if you could explain exactly what is going on here, I’d be really grateful._

No, he can’t actually write that.

_Dear Mom and Dad,_

_How are you? Camp is fine, but only during talent show rehearsals, when I’m in the bathroom, and when I’m asleep. Otherwise it’s kind of a living hell._

That would not be a good letter either.

_Dear Cindy,_

_I’ve had a crush on you for about two years now, ever since that field trip to the state house. I just wanted you to know that, in case I don’t make it home from camp—which I might not, because there’s a girl who I’m pretty sure is trying to kill me, or maybe she’s trying to make me kill myself._

These letters just keep getting worse and worse, don’t they? And melodramatic. They’re getting increasingly melodramatic.

“Ben,” asks Jess, “are you actually going to write Mom and Dad a letter, or are you just going to stare at the paper all day?”

Oh god, now Jess is criticizing him too.

“Just give me yours and I’ll mail them both,” he sighs. She shrugs, throws her letter on the table, and runs outside to join April and Shauna.

_Dear Mom and Dad,_

_Camp is fine. The weather has been pretty good. It isn’t too hot or anything. My bunkmates are strange, but nice. We’re playing a lot of baseball, and it’s going well. Nothing particularly exciting has happened. I guess that’s a good thing. Miss you. Don’t mess up my stuff._

Well, it’s not the most engaging letter he’s ever written, but it’ll do. Baseball really is going well, aside from that one small thing (that one small blonde thing that won’t stop yelling at him). Chris is some sort of body mechanics genius—after ten minutes with him, Ben’s swing had improved more than it had in the three years Steve’s dad had coached his middle school team. Between that, Andy’s willingness to shag endless ground balls for fielding practice, and the morning workouts, he’s actually starting to feel like he has some control over his own body, or more accurately, like he will have once he gets over being sore all the time. It’s a good feeling. A really good feeling, in fact. Like maybe the horrible awkward phase actually is going to go away at some point, maybe even in the near future. (The most reassuring thing has maybe been discovering that _everybody_ , even Chris, uses that horribly embarrassing prescription acne medication. Apparently it really isn’t a big deal.)

He probably shouldn’t get his hopes up _too_ high, though.

Ben crams both letters in an envelope, stamps and addresses it, and tosses it in the mail bin, thinking of the letter that he really wants to write.

_Dear Friend (or should I say Leslie),_

_Look, I know who you are. I don’t know if you know who I am, but honestly, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out, so I’m going to assume that you do._

_Will you just STOP? You’ve made your point. I’m sorry I didn’t meet whatever expectations you had, but I get it, you can’t stand to be around me even though you seem to be around me all the time. I would personally buy you the damn field hockey equipment, if I had the money for it, just to get you to shut up._

_P.S. I think you might be pretty awesome if you didn’t hate me, which makes this even more frustrating._

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because he’s been watching her pretty closely ever since he realized who she was, trying to figure out if she’s realized who _he_ is, and while he honestly doesn’t know what Leslie knows or suspects regarding the pen pal situation, he _does_ know that Leslie does not like him. Not one little bit.

He also knows that he’s starting to feel the same way around her that he feels around Cindy, which is probably because he knows that on some level (one that he is never going to see in person, apparently) she’s this amazing…just, no. He’s got to stop thinking that way. Why? Why does he have to do this to himself? This is worse. This is way worse. This is a million times worse. Ben’s known Cindy since kindergarten, and he can count the number of times she’s yelled at him on one hand—exactly once, in second grade, when he’d accidentally knocked over her chocolate milk at lunch—and then she’d immediately apologized for it. Other than that, Cindy has always been nice. Extremely nice. Even when she’d started going out with Steve, she’d remained perfectly nice.

Leslie, on the other hand, has been yelling at him _every single day_ , and not just a little bit, but for _hours_ every single day. She follows this with hours of completely ignoring him every day.

There really must be something seriously wrong with him, if he’s not running away as fast as he can every time he sees her coming. _Leslie_ clearly thinks there’s something wrong with him, because she isn’t like this around anyone else, not at all. He’s checked. When he’d realized that Leslie was essentially running the talent show, and that Jess was at rehearsals every morning (singing “Part of Your World,” no doubt), he’d had a moment of panic—if he let his little sister be scarred for life by his insane pen pal, he’d probably be grounded for the entirety of high school. But no, as it turns out, he doesn’t have to worry about that.

“Dude, Leslie’s awesome,” Andy had said, like Ben was crazy to even ask if Leslie was imitating a homicidal maniac during talent show rehearsals. “Seriously, she’s like the coolest ever. She’s great with little kids.”

J.R. and Darwish had concurred. “Not my type, but she’s totally rad,” was Darwish’s expert opinion. J.R. had even expressed Leslie’s awesomeness through an original rap, which unfortunately didn’t rhyme.

Ben isn’t sure he should trust their opinions, though (seriously, who doesn’t know you’re supposed to end the rap on the rhyme?), so on Wednesday morning he corners Jess. This garners him another “are you crazy?” look.

“She’s not mean to you?” he asks incredulously.

“No!” says Jess. “Leslie’s really nice. She’s way better than your girlfriend.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Ben says, prickling.

“ _Cindy_ ,” said Jess. “Duh.”

“Cindy isn’t my girlfriend.”

“I thought you liked her,” says Jess, chasing the last Cheerio with her plastic spoon.

“That doesn’t make her my girlfriend.” Damn it, he probably should have denied liking her.

“It should.”

“We’re just friends,” he sighs. Jess raises one eyebrow at him. “She’s going out with Steve.” Is he _really_ having a conversation about his (lack of) love life with his ten-year-old sister?

“Oh,” says Jess, looking a little surprised. “But she was _hugging_ you. At your graduation.”

“Yeah, and she was kissing Steve at the dance. They’ve been going out for more than a month now.” _Why_ is he having this conversation with Jess?

She makes a face. “That’s gross,” she says, untangling herself from the picnic table. “Steve’s dumb _and_ ugly.” She pauses, thinking, and it’s kind of uncanny how much she looks like their mom right now. “You can do better than that.”

Okay, _that’s_ why he’s having this conversation with her.

Ben hangs back in the mess hall that morning, instead of going down to the field to do something with Chris or Mark like he usually does. He ducks into the rec building and finds a place to hide, so that he can watch part of the talent show rehearsals.

It’s more or less as bad as he’d feared.

Everyone’s right, Leslie _is_ really nice and they’re all having a great time. She’s also motivated and organized and has really great ideas—well, he knew that already, but watching her execute them is, quite frankly, really impressive. Everyone just sort of defers to her, even Jerry, but it’s not because she’s yelling, she’s just…leading them. He’s helped out with enough middle school drama productions (well, Cindy had _asked_ ) to know that Leslie’s talent show is going absurdly smoothly, and also that it’s going to be kind of good, even if “good” is relative and mostly just means that no one will try to surreptitiously leave the performance at intermission, like they usually do at the middle school drama productions.

 _This_ is the girl from the letters, he thinks, watching her discuss ideas for scenery painting with Jerry and a bunch of younger girls. This is the girl who loves miniature horses and wildflower murals and hero-worships Eleanor Roosevelt and has a twenty-three-step comprehensive plan for what to do if the raccoons invade again.

She’s kind of that awesome at the lake, too, and at night, when everybody but Marcia comes to hang out in cabin six. Except at those times it’s like she’s using some sort of magical power that makes Ben feel completely invisible. She is definitely purposefully ignoring him. Even Cindy has never _ignored_ him, exactly, not even when Steve is around. But Leslie does. She acts like he absolutely is not there, and she has an obviously fantastic time with everyone else at the lake and in the cabin. It’s like he’s no fun and she knows it and she wants to rub it in his face, but not really because she’s not even acknowledging that his face is in the room with her.

The ignoring actually hurts worse than the yelling.

He’s just going to have to live with it for seven more weeks. Then he can go back home and try to forget about her, and just…think about Cindy all the time, is probably what it’ll boil down to.

Damn it.

He really, really wishes that he hadn’t peeked at that field hockey binder. Somehow, he feels like it would be less painful not to _know_.

Ben heads down to the sports field after lunch, where he endures another, maddeningly typical afternoon of Leslie questioning his managerial decisions—she absolutely refuses to believe that there’s no point in calling for specific pitches when Jess’s weird friend April’s even weirder friend Orin is pitching, and it’s all Orin can do to even get the ball as far as home plate. Or that they don’t need to move the outfielders around from hitter to hitter, because they’ve instituted an “everybody who shows up gets to go on the field” rule, and right now there are eight outfielders.

“Lindsay is going to pull this one,” she insists, during what is probably the sixteenth time-out she’s called today. Her hair is different today—it’s braided, and she’s playing with the end of the braid, twisting it around her fingers, completely unaware of how distracting this is. “You should shift everyone to the left field side.”

Lindsay has not hit anything farther than the pitcher’s mound this entire week, so regardless of which direction she might send the ball, he doesn’t really see why they need to be concerned about the outfield right now.

“There are three left fielders already, Leslie,” he says, forcing himself to look away from her hair. “If they shift, they’re going to run into each other.”

“I just think you should be willing to consider alternate strategies!” Oh god, she’s even louder than she was yesterday.

“We’re playing for fun, not to win the game,” he mutters, but of course she either doesn’t hear him or pretends not to.

Lindsay surprises all of them by popping up to Donna, who’s playing first today. Ben glances over at Leslie, who is completely unabashed by her utter wrongness, as usual. How does she manage to be so confident all the time? He wishes he could do that. “Nice hands, Donna,” she calls, clapping her bare hand against her borrowed glove.

Then Leslie comes to his cabin that night (of course she does, she always does) and gets into an argument with Darwish about _Star Wars_ , of all things. She’s brainstorming about how to get more boys involved with the talent show, or something. For an instant, Ben is about to volunteer to—no, that is a very bad idea and he needs to stop himself from saying it out loud.

“So if we _could_ get about a dozen light sabers,” she’s saying, eagerly, “we could coordinate a dance number and do it with the lights off. Jerry knows how to play the Imperial Death March. It’d look really awesome.”

“You dork!” yells Darwish. “God, Leslie, that’s the nerdiest—” But he’s cut off, because Leslie grabs a pillow and swats him across the face with it.

“It’s not that nerdy!” she insists. “Everybody’s seen those movies, so everyone would get the dance. It’d be popular.”

Okay, now Ben’s sure she’s torturing him on purpose. She even looks at him when she says it. It’s only a tiny sideways glance, but she definitely does look at him, and they make eye contact for a fraction of a second before he looks back at his book, and she spins 180 degrees across the cabin, and focuses on Mark.

“Right, Mark?” she says brightly. “You’ve seen all three movies, haven’t you?”

“Let’s vote on it,” interrupts Darwish. “Mark, dorky idea, yes or no?”

“Yes,” says Mark. “But it’s a talent show for parents. All of it’s going to be dorky anyway.”

“Shut up, Mark,” says Leslie. She whirls back around. “Ben, what do you think?”

Ben thinks he might be about to fall off the top bunk. This is definitely the first time she’s ever acknowledged him during one of these nighttime parties.

“Um,” he says, after far too long a pause. “Um, I guess.”

“You guess what?” she asks. Damn it. Should he agree with her (which might put him closer to her good side) or continue with his plan of trying to be less embarrassingly dorky?

“I guess—I guess it is kind of a nerdy idea,” he says. Darwish whoops. “But,” he continues, quickly, “I also think Leslie’s right. Everyone _has_ seen those movies.”

“So,” she says, ruthlessly, “do you think it’s a good idea or not?”

Ben really feels as though this is some sort of trick question. Oh, what the hell. He’s been reading _Lord of the Rings_ in front of everyone all week and somehow, he doesn’t seem to have branded himself as hopelessly uncool yet. Plus, he isn’t a very good liar.

“Yes,” he says, as decisively as he can manage. “I think it would be awesome.”

For a second or two, she grins at him, and... Damn it, now he’s going to spend the rest of the summer thinking about that, and wanting it to happen again, which it won’t.

Unless he tells her? He wouldn’t even have to do it in person. He could write her a letter and sneak it into her bunk somehow.

But she’s already off again, interrogating the others with her usual enthusiasm. And sure enough, she spends the rest of the evening aggressively pretending that he isn’t there.

He can’t tell her. It’s been almost a week already. What would he even say at this point? What if he wrote a letter and somebody else got a hold of it somehow?

Damn it.

After the girls finally leave cabin six, Chris assures everyone that they’ll get to sleep in tomorrow. “It’s _very_ important to have a rest day for muscle regeneration,” he tells them, although apparently he’s still planning to run four miles before breakfast.

Ben really has come to appreciate the morning torture sessions, sort of—the endorphin rush is kind of great, but what he likes best, maybe even more than his slightly increased physical coordination, is being so tired by the end of the day that he doesn’t wake up for most of Chris’s frequent trips to the bathroom. (Or Cindy-related nightmares. He hasn’t had one in three days, which is some kind of record.) Still, he’s not going to complain about sleeping past 6:00 during what is ostensibly a summer vacation.

Except that of course he doesn’t get to sleep late, because their cabin door bangs open and then shut like a cannon blast around 4:30. There might also have been some high-pitched giggling; Ben isn’t really sure what he heard, but everybody wakes up.

“What was that?” squeals J.R., sounding absolutely terrified, and then Andy falls out of his bunk and crashes onto his Rollerblades, which go flying into his guitar case, and yeah, everyone’s awake.

“Probably just the wind,” yawns Mark, rolling over. “Go back to sleep.”

But for some reason, none of them can, possibly because it’s obvious that there is no wind. Andy, still on the floor, announces that he’s going to go play guitar in the bathroom, where the acoustics are better.

“Come on, guys, come with me,” he pleads. “It’d be really helpful to have an audience. Test out my new lyrics.” So everyone else puts on shoes and shuffles out the door, yawning.

They’re about halfway between their cabin and the bathrooms when J.R. shrieks hysterically, Ben jumps backwards about six feet, Andy starts giggling madly, and Darwish actually passes out, landing in the dirt with a surprisingly loud thump.

Ben hears another cabin door creak open, and then the girls from cabin seven show up en masse, looking confused. Suddenly remembering that he’s wearing his oldest plaid pajama pants, Ben tries to duck behind Andy—although he probably shouldn’t bother being embarrassed, he thinks, since everybody’s attention is pretty focused on those things on the ground, and anyway Darwish is both passed out _and_ wearing paisley satin pajamas, which have got to be worse than his plaid ones.

“What’s going on out here?” asks Joan, stepping over Darwish to get a closer look. Donna snorts, Lindsay mutters “Gross,” Marcia turns on her heel and strides back to the cabin, Ann starts laughing, and Leslie looks like she doesn’t know what to think.

“Dude,” says Mark, awed. “What the hell?” No one is awake enough to form a response, or maybe they’re all just too shocked. They’re all still staring at the seven— _seven_ —used condoms several minutes later when Ron emerges, wearing his fishing outfit. He looks…odd, Ben thinks. Something isn’t quite right. Is part of his mustache gone?

“Go back to bed!” Ron commands, leaning over and slapping Darwish on the cheeks, but no one moves.

A moment later, Tammy emerges from inside the bathroom, freshly showered and clad in a very short, tight bathrobe. “Why is everyone awake?” she asks.

Ron scoops up Darwish from the ground, cradling him like a baby. He’s still out cold. “Tammy, if you could clean up,” he says, jerking his head at the trail of condoms.

“Ew,” says Tammy. “What’s that all about?” She giggles momentarily, then narrows her eyes. “Lindsay, go get a long stick. And a trash bag. And some rubber gloves.”

“Chris, run up and get the smelling salts from the infirmary. Andy, damp cloth. Everyone else, back in their cabins, now!” shouts Ron. He carries Darwish back into the cabin, and the rest of the boys follow.

Somehow, the rest of the day is reasonably normal after that, although Ben feels bad for Darwish, whose self-described “cool vibe” has, understandably, been replaced by a self-described “not as cool of a vibe,” using whatever ridiculous vibe quantification system he’s come up with. Mark is particularly merciless, but even if he hadn’t been, it wouldn’t really matter. By midmorning even April, Shauna, and Jess are making fun of him, although they don’t seem to know _why_ Darwish passed out, to Ben’s relief. Even if he is talking about girls with her now, he does _not_ want to have to explain condoms to his little sister.

On Friday, the 6:00 a.m. workouts start again, and they find more condoms. This time there’s a pretty clear trail of them, leading from the back door of cabin six to the back door of cabin seven.

“They’re not,” says Mark, sounding equally horrified and impressed.

“Pretty sure they are,” says Darwish, swaying slightly on his feet as he gingerly feels the knot on the back of his head.

“Are they doing it _outside_?” Mark wonders. No one really wants to answer that question.

After the discovery of a second round of condoms, Jerry is beside himself, although he somehow hasn’t actually figured out who’s responsible for the situation. His (very pregnant) wife actually has to follow him around camp all day on Friday so that she can encourage him to breathe into paper bags, after he accidentally falls into the lake.

Something might be in the air all of a sudden, like the condoms have opened up a previously untapped reserve of hormones and now everyone’s gone completely insane. That morning Ben and Mark are making their way towards the equipment shed when they happen upon Chris enthusiastically making out with Leslie’s friend Ann behind a tree. In the afternoon, Ben turns a corner only to find Leslie’s other friend Lindsay pinning Mark to a wall in a dark corner of the mess hall, and at dinner he suddenly realizes that Jess, April, and Shauna are trailing Andy everywhere he goes. (Andy, thank god, seems oblivious to this.) The worst might actually be seeing Donna and J.R.—good _lord_ , that was disturbing, and they weren’t even really _doing_ anything as far as Ben could tell.

And Leslie is—is she stalking Mark? That’s odd. He’d assumed Leslie was into Chris; most of the girls at camp were. But then again, he thinks Leslie is probably the kind of girl who would give up liking a guy if she knew her friend was into him—no, wait. That only explains why she would try to stop liking Chris, not Mark, since Leslie is friends with both Ann and Lindsay, and Lindsay is definitely flinging herself at Mark. This is all getting so confusing. If things keep up like this, he’s going to need a flow chart to keep all the liking straight.

Anyway, Ben is sitting with Andy at dinner, and then Mark sits with them, and then Leslie sits next to Mark, so Ben gets to experience another hour or so of being ignored by Leslie. Almost three hours, if he counts the nightly campfire.

She sits next to Mark again, and starts getting him marshmallows, and now she’s laughing at everything he says, and…oh, _shit_.

Ben goes back to the cabin after about ten minutes of _that_. He digs out his Walkman, turns up the volume so he won’t be able to hear anyone, and then pretends to be asleep, just in case.

Early Saturday morning ( _really_ early Saturday morning), Chris returns from his fourth pee and flips the lights on, waking everyone up. “They’re in the bathroom,” he gasps, looking horrified. He’s hyperventilating and clutching his chest. “They are _literally_ doing it in the bathroom right this instant. I saw _everything_. Oh, my god. My heart is racing.”

“Oh, dude, gross,” laughs Andy.

“Did you really have to wake us up for that?” groans Mark, who has been extremely unpleasant towards Chris for the past fifteen hours or so.

They hear a series of bangs, then several squeals and some extremely disturbing moaning.

Ben puts his pillow over his head and tries very hard to think about something calming. Anything. It doesn’t work, though at least he’s able to console himself with the thought that for once, it wasn’t him walking in on something. Everyone finally drops back off around 6:00, and they all sleep past breakfast, even Chris.

Poor Chris is so traumatized by whatever he saw in the bathrooms that he doesn’t run around the lake for the entire day, not even once. He just sits by the lake with Ann, who’s clearly trying (and apparently failing) to talk him down. Ben makes a personal resolution not to be traumatized, but only manages to keep it until lunchtime, when he overhears Orin explaining what condoms are to Jess, April, and Shauna.

Yeah, he’s going to pretend that didn’t happen. He’s just going to go down to the sports field and brace himself for another three hours of Leslie screaming at him and/or flirting with Mark, since apparently that’s happening now. Maybe she’ll play on Mark’s team for once, and leave him alone.

But Leslie isn’t at the sports field. She doesn’t show up all afternoon. Neither do Mark, Chris, Ann, or Lindsay. Leslie doesn’t come to the lake, either, or to their cabin that night. Ann and Lindsay remain missing, too, and Mark is in such a bad mood that he cusses out Andy for playing guitar in the cabin in the middle of the afternoon, then storms away, slams the cabin door, and doesn’t come back. Andy has some insane story about Leslie at last night’s campfire that he swears will probably explain her disappearance, but the minute Ben hears the words “Leslie” and “campfire,” he wills himself not to listen anymore.

Only seven more weeks of camp left, Ben thinks. And it had all started so well, too. Thank goodness he brought such a large book.

***

A very excited Ann grabs Leslie at lunch on Friday and pulls her outside.

“Oh, my god, Leslie,” she says. She’s practically jumping up and down. “Okay, I’m telling you now because I don’t want you to think we’re not best friends, and because I _have_ to tell you anyway—Chris and I are going out now. We just made out for, like, an hour.” She beams.

“That’s great!” says Leslie, briefly wondering how exactly you can “go out” with someone at camp, since there’s nowhere _to_ go. But she is happy for Ann. No, really she is, even if it means she has to sit with Chris at lunch. She likes Chris well enough, but it’s hard for her to enjoy her Doritos and Capri Sun while he’s lecturing her about salt and artificial coloring.

Later on Friday afternoon, Leslie’s rinsing out her swimsuit in the bathroom when Lindsay comes in, looking pleased. She doesn’t even bother to sneer at the swimsuit.

“I just thought you should know,” she says, arching her eyebrows, “that I’ve finally had a chance to really talk to Mark, one-on-one.”

“Okay…” Leslie says, uncertainly.

“And the conversation went well.”

“Okay…”

“So I _think_ ,” says Lindsay (has she always been so smug? Leslie doesn’t remember her being this smug) “that by the end of the day tomorrow, we’ll be an item.”

Lindsay has definitely not always been this smug.

“That’s great!” Leslie says again, but it’s harder to sound sincere this time. She wonders, vaguely, if Mark knows that Ann and Chris started going out. It seems like the sort of gossip that would travel quickly, especially since about seventy-five percent of the girls at this camp are crushing on Chris.

Maybe Ann’s right, and these things do just happen, and Mark really is into Lindsay now, even though she’s been trying to be an _item_ with him since before Christmas and he’s never been interested before. She just doesn’t want Lindsay to be Mark’s consolation prize, is all, even though Lindsay has to know that Mark is into Ann. She does have to know that, right? Even if she doesn’t want to believe it?

Leslie should say something about that to Lindsay, probably, but she’s kind of afraid to. She doesn’t want Lindsay to be angry with her, and on top of that, it’s not like she knows that much (or anything) about boys. So she bites her tongue. For now, anyway.

She decides she’ll try to sit with Mark at dinner that night—then she’ll be able to keep an eye on him and maybe question his motives a little bit. She hangs back in the corner, waiting, pretending like she’s feeling around in the cooler for a drink. (Her hand is really cold. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. She leaves her hand in the cooler anyway.) Soon after, Mark enters the mess hall by himself, scans the available seats. Lindsay and Joan are on the left side of the room, Chris and Ann are in the middle, and Ben and Andy are on the right. Mark deliberately passes over Lindsay’s frantically waving arm, and makes a beeline for Ben and Andy. Well, there’s strike one.

And, crap. She’s going to have to sit with Ben now, and that’s going to distract her. She can’t afford another slip-up like she’d had in the cabin the other night, during the _Star Wars_ discussion, which she really should never have brought up in the first place. The look on his face when she’d accidentally smiled at him…god she wishes she could talk to Ann about this.

Spine straight, shoulders back, don’t spill the baked beans, don’t touch anyone with the freezing cold hand.

“Hey, guys, can I sit here?” she asks, cheerfully.

“Yeah, of course,” says Andy, shifting aside. Mark just shrugs. He keeps looking over at Chris and Ann. Ben doesn’t react. ( _Why?_ Why doesn’t he ever react?)

It takes a little effort on her part, but Leslie eventually gets both Mark and Andy engaged in a conversation about the Pawnee High football team, which is a perfect conversation topic—Ben’s not from Pawnee, he has no idea what they’re talking about, and he doesn’t even try to join in. She feels a slight pang of guilt for deliberately excluding him, though. This flirting thing just feels so wrong, even if not paying attention to him is the only way to make sure he’ll pay attention to her.

Whatever. The important thing is figuring out what Mark thinks about Lindsay, not what Ben thinks about her. So she follows Mark to the campfire after dinner, grabs them both some marshmallows, and sits down next to him.

Considering that she’s known Mark for about three years now, and neither of them have ever had much to say to each other (and mostly Leslie still thinks he’s annoying at best, and a misogynist at worst), he’s surprisingly easy to talk to. The problem is, they’re talking about themselves, and not Lindsay, and Leslie has _no_ idea how to steer the conversation in the right direction. But at least he seems to be in a slightly better mood now.

“Are you trying out for the baseball team next year?” she asks. “Because Lindsay and I are planning to go to all the games, and—”

“Since when do you like baseball, anyway?” Mark says, smiling a little.

Leslie blushes. Crap—is Mark, of all people, going to see through her scheme? “I—I don’t, really. But I’m going to go to all the sporting events anyway, because it’s very important to support the teams. And Lindsay—”

“Especially when you run for student government, right?”

“How did you know I was going to do that?”

Mark laughs. “Leslie, we’ve gone to the same school for how long? You run for student government _every_ year. It’s like your thing. You’re a go-getter.”

Well, she can’t deny that. She’s just a little surprised that Mark noticed.

She’s waving her speared marshmallow at the campfire, trying to toast it perfectly while she thinks of a response that will somehow steer the conversation back to Lindsay, when her left arm suddenly feels very hot, and then _all_ of her suddenly feels very wet.

“I think I saved her!” announces Andy to the group at large. He holds up an empty bucket. “Leslie, are you okay?”

“I’m _dripping_ ,” she says. “Andy, what the—”

“Oh, my goodness, Leslie, are you all right?” asks Jerry, hurrying over. “Do you need to see the nurse?”

“No, I’m fine. Why is everyone—” She’s not imagining things; everyone _is_ staring at her. Mark is snickering a little bit, Darwish is absolutely howling with laughter, and everyone else just looks sort of concerned.

“Your sleeve caught fire,” says Andy, pointing at her left arm. “So I extinguished the flames by dousing you with this water, because applying water removes one of the elements of the fire tetrahedron by dissipating heat faster than the fire itself can produce that heat.” He pauses. “School.”

Crap. He’s right. Her left sleeve _does_ have a giant, singed hole in it.

“Great,” she says. “Thanks, Andy. Jerry, I’m fine, nothing’s burned. I’m—I’m gonna go dry off.”

Or crawl in a hole and die, she thinks, hurrying away from the campfire. She really would rather crawl in a hole and die right now. At least Ben had left early, and he didn’t see—crap, it doesn’t matter, everyone else was there and he’s going to hear about it anyway.

Leslie wakes up extra early on Saturday so that she can avoid most people at breakfast, and then heads down to the back of the rec building, where she and Ron have been assembling a makeshift set design workshop. No one really wants to help her paint scenery for the talent show anyway, she knows, so this as good a place to be alone as anywhere else is, and she has work to do. They’ve got a beach backdrop from last year, but it needs touching up, and she has to add stupid Prince Eric’s ship to it.

He’s such an _idiot_ , she thinks, outlining the sails. And so is Ariel, breaking all of her father’s perfectly sensible rules and being totally irresponsible just so that she can stare at some guy who isn’t even all that interesting. What does he even do? He doesn’t do anything. Not that she approves of princesses needing to be rescued all the time—because she absolutely does not and she thinks it’s a horrible message to send to young girls, that they ought to sit around waiting to be rescued—but Eric doesn’t even do that, which on the whole makes him a pretty useless prince.

After a few hours of concentrating intensely on her painting, Leslie feels better. Setting herself on fire really isn’t such a big deal; something like that could happen to anyone. Just a few months ago, Andy had broken his wrist falling off the bleachers during a school assembly, and everyone had forgotten about it in a week. And if Darwish tries to make fun of her, she can still taunt him about his fainting spell, so. Yeah, she’s going to be all right.

“Hey, Leslie,” says a voice behind her. “Want a hand with that?”

It’s Mark. That’s odd. She thought he would be down at the sports field, or something.

“Oh, hey,” she says. “I was just finishing this. I think I’m going to go get lunch now.” She drops her paintbrush in a jar of water.

“Is that a pirate ship?” he asks, walking closer to it. “It looks good. You’re a really good artist, you know that?”

“Thanks. No, it’s from _The Little Mermaid_. It’s for the Disney medley.” What is Mark doing, anyway? He doesn’t care about the talent show at all, and nobody cares about the scenery. “Why are you here?”

He shrugs, casually. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

Oh, that. “I’m fine,” Leslie says, turning to show him her left arm. She smiles. “See? No burns.”

To her surprise, Mark grabs her wrist gently with one hand and runs his other hand slowly up her arm.

“Good,” he says, stepping closer, and now he’s totally in her personal bubble and he’s leaning over her and what the hell is he doing? It feels like time is slowing down, but not in a good way, more like she’s about to get into a horrible traffic accident, and then all of a sudden she _knows_ what’s about to happen and she doesn’t want it to but she’s frozen to the spot, and if she can’t move her feet how is she going to get away in time?

“Mark, no—”

But it’s too late. His horrible, stupid, rubbery lips are on hers, and they’re _squishy_ , and they’re _wet_ , and his breath smells like corn chips. She clamps her mouth shut as hard as she can, trying to twist away, but he’s much bigger and stronger than she is and she can’t get any leverage here. Then he starts trying to force her lips open with his tongue, and oh crap that feels awful. All she can think is no, this is _not_ the way that this was supposed to happen.

Finally, after what seems like hours of him slobbering all over her face, Ron’s self-defense training kicks in. Start at the ankles and work your way up, she thinks. Well, she can’t do an ankle sweep, and she’s at the wrong angle to take out his knees. So she works her way up, and drives her own knee into his balls, as hard as she can.

“What the _fuck_ did you do that for?” he gasps, staggering backwards and cupping his crotch.

It takes Leslie a minute to find her voice.

“Me?” she says incredulously, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “What did _you_ do _that_ for?” But she doesn’t really want to wait for an answer. She doesn’t want to be anywhere near Mark Brendanawicz right now.

“Don’t be such a prude, Leslie,” he says, still hunched over. “It’s not a big deal. You could’ve just said no.”

What the hell? It _is_ a big deal. “I _did_ say no,” she snaps, and now she can feel tears starting to prickle behind her eyes. “You didn’t listen. So—so _fuck you_ , Mark.” For a moment she almost expects something bad to happen—she can’t remember having ever having said that word out loud before—but nothing does, so she starts running back to the cabin, as fast as she can, past—she doesn’t even know who she’s passing, except for Ron, who’s gutting a bunch of fish by the front door of the rec center, and she only realizes that because of the smell.

“Leslie?” he asks as she flies by, but she ignores him. She just wants to be somewhere private before she loses it completely. All she can think about is how terribly, terribly wrong all of that was. She hasn’t spent a whole lot of time imagining her first kiss—actually she’s spent practically no time imagining her first kiss—but she does know, she is one hundred percent positive, that _it wasn’t supposed to happen that way._

The more she thinks about it, the angrier she gets.

Donna and Marcia are in the cabin when Leslie finally gets there, but she doesn’t even care. There’s nowhere else to go, anyway, or nowhere that she won’t see Mark. She crawls into her bed and just stares at the underside of the top bunk, willing herself not to cry in front of other people. It’s not working. She can feel tears leaking down her face. Hot, angry tears.

“Are you okay?” asks Donna, after a few minutes.

“I’m fine,” Leslie says, sitting up and furiously wiping her eyes. “Great. Screw him.”

“Screw who?” asks Donna, curiously.

“Mark,” she says. “Screw Mark. He’s an asshole.” She stands up. “I have to talk to Lindsay.”

“Wash your face first,” advises Donna.

But she doesn’t have time for that, because just then Lindsay comes storming into the cabin, looking absolutely furious. “Out,” she says, glaring at Donna and Marcia.

They leave. Lindsay locks the door behind them.

“What,” says Lindsay, in a low hiss, “is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with _me_?” Leslie asks.

“Yeah,” Lindsay replies. “What’s wrong with you? Why would you do that to me?”

“I didn’t do anything to you!”

“Like hell you didn’t!” yells Lindsay. “You knew. You knew I liked Mark. You _knew_ and then the minute my back is turned, you—you start flirting with him—”

Oh crap.

“I did not!” She’s trying not to yell, but it’s hard, because Lindsay’s hackles have been raised from the minute she walked in the door.

“You did!” Lindsay spits. “I _saw_ you last night, Leslie. You were all over him. Joan saw you too. Everybody did. You—you freaking set yourself on fire to get his attention.”

Okay, that’s just absurd. “I wasn’t flirting with him!” Leslie protests. “He sat next to me at dinner, and I was just—I was trying—”

“Trying to what? Get him to kiss you?” Lindsay laughs, and it’s hollow and awful. Does she know he _did_ try? Leslie can’t tell.

“No! You—you said you thought he liked you, so I was trying to figure out whether he actually did, or whether he was just going to—because of Ann and Chris—he never wanted to before, so—”

Even as the words are leaving her mouth, Leslie realizes that this is not the right thing to say, but she only cares a little bit about that right now.

“Oh, because of _Ann_ ,” says Lindsay. “Everything is about _Ann_ all the time now.”

“No, it isn’t, this is about Mark and how he’s a stupid misogynist—” But Lindsay’s already yelling over her, with tears streaming down her face and onto that stupid baggy sweatshirt she always wears.

“Screw you, Leslie,” Lindsay spits. “Let me tell you what’s been going on for the last few months, since you’re so freaking oblivious to everything all the time. Ever since we signed up for this stupid camp, you’ve been talking about Ann. Ann this, Ann that, Ann is perfect and awesome and we’re going to have _so much fun_ with her, like it’s impossible to have any fun without her around. Which, yeah. Thank you, Leslie, for making it so _abundantly clear_ that she’s so much better than me and I’m not your best friend anymore.”

“Yes, you are,” Leslie says, momentarily shocked. Is that really what Lindsay thinks? She can feel tears starting to collect behind her eyes again. “Of course you are, we’ve been best friends since—”

“No, I’m not, and you know it,” says Lindsay. “Not anymore. That’s why you spend all your time with Ann, right? Why you go shopping with her and not me? Why you’re always on her team for baseball? Why you won’t talk to me even when we _are_ hanging out?”

“None of those things are true!” Leslie protests, realizing suddenly that they kind of are, even if Lindsay doesn’t have the reasons quite right.

But Lindsay’s already taking a deep breath, preparing to start in again. “All you’ve done for the last few months is point out how dumb you think I am for being interested in boys when you’re not,” she yells. “Well, I can’t help it if I grew up and you’re still some dumb little kid. And I know you think you’re so much better than I am because of that, but you can just stop rubbing it in my face, Leslie, because you’re _not_. Because at least _I_ would never go around trying to seduce other people’s boyfriends just so—just so I didn’t feel left out when my friend started dating someone.”

“I don’t even know what you’re—” Leslie really doesn’t. She isn’t even sure who they’re fighting about anymore, Ann or Mark.

“Yeah, you do,” Lindsay insists. “The minute Ann started going out with Chris, you started throwing yourself at Mark, when you knew that I—”

“No, I didn’t!” Leslie’s feeling uncomfortably hot now, and a little bit dizzy, like she’s trapped in some sort of bad dream. This must be a bad dream, right? Everything has been a bad dream, from the moment she caught her sleeve on fire, and she’s going to wake up any minute now, because the real Lindsay would never be accusing her of this, it doesn’t make any sense.

“You _did_ ,” insists Lindsay, again.

“I did not!” Okay, on the off chance that this isn’t a nightmare and she isn’t going to wake up, she’d better start fighting back. “You’re the one who’s— _you’ve_ been throwing yourself at Mark. You’ve been doing it for _forever_ now, and it’s pathetic. Everyone thinks so.” Is she going too far? She might be, but she can’t help it; she’s on a roll now. “And he is not your boyfriend, by the way. He doesn’t even _like_ you, and if you weren’t so _desperate_ , you’d have realized it. He didn’t say a single word about you last night. He likes _Ann_ , and that’s true whether you think I’m trying to make everything about her or not. Which I’m not, by the way. I was just trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

“By _kissing him_?” Lindsay screams. “I know what you were doing behind the rec building. The whole camp knows.”

“Oh, is that what you heard? Who told you that, Mark? Is that what he’s telling people?” She kind of wants to strangle Lindsay with that stupid sweatshirt now.

“He doesn’t _have to_. We all _know_. Are you going to deny it?”

“Yeah, because it isn’t true! I didn’t kiss him, _he_ kissed _me_ , and—”

 _And I told him to stop and he didn’t and it was awful, like probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me_ is what she’s going to say next, but Lindsay cuts her off.

“You—you little _slut_ ,” she hisses. “You know what, Leslie? This is over. You’re not my friend. Go to hell.”

And she slams the cabin door on her way out, leaving Leslie alone, and feeling kind of gutted, like one of Ron’s fish. Before the door closes all the way, she can see Joan, Donna, and Marcia standing outside the cabin. Great. They’ve been listening. Joan is going to tell _everybody_ , and Joan is obviously going to be on Lindsay’s side here, and now the whole camp is going to think that Leslie is a slut when the last thing she’d _ever_ wanted to do was kiss Mark Brendanawicz.

“Will someone go get Ann?” she chokes out, hoping that asking for Ann doesn’t make everything Lindsay just said about her true. Her knees are really wobbly. Donna rushes into the cabin and guides her to the bed.

“Did you eat lunch?” she asks.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll get you something anyway,” she says, bustling away. “Just ‘cause Bitchy McSweatshirt doesn’t eat, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

“Whatever,” Leslie mutters. Then she bursts into tears.

***


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

Somehow it’s Ron, not Ann, who gets to the girls’ cabin first.

“Leslie, what the hell happened?” he asks, even more gruffly than usual. “Not that I care, but Mark Brendanawicz is in the infirmary with a bag of frozen peas on his crotch. He won’t tell me what happened. Rumors are that it has something to do with you. If you’re assaulting the other campers now, I need to know about it.”

“If _I’m_ assaulting other campers?” Leslie sputters, between tears. She might be sad right now, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be angry too.

“Count backwards from a thousand by sevens and think of warm brownies,” Ron orders. It’s strangely calming (possibly because she has to think really hard about counting backwards by sevens), but it’s not until Leslie gets to 776 that she feels together enough to speak.

“Okay,” she says, determinedly, hoping that she’ll be able to talk this through without crying. “What happened was that I was painting, and Mark showed up all of a sudden and tried to kiss me, and I told him no, but he didn’t listen. I couldn’t get enough leverage to twist around, so—”

“So you started at the ankles and worked up,” finishes Ron. She’s pretty sure the corner of his mustache twitches, although it’s harder to tell, since part of it is still missing. He nods, curtly. “Good girl.”

He’s halfway out the door when Leslie blurts out, “Is Mark okay?” Not that she cares that much, he’s a jerk and he totally deserves to be sitting in the infirmary with a bag of frozen peas on his private parts, but she would feel a little bit bad if she’d accidentally ruined his chance to have children in fifteen years or something. Also, she needs to remember to tell Ann not to eat any peas.

Ron pauses, but answers without turning around. “He will be once the swelling goes down.” It’s hard to tell, but Leslie thinks he might sound the tiniest bit amused. “Next fishing trip is at 4:30 tomorrow morning. We’ll continue your self-defense lessons after lunch.”

As soon as he’s gone, she starts crying again.

“Are you okay, Leslie?” asks Ann, flying into the cabin ten minutes later. “Donna said you needed me and then she said that Joan is just spreading the most _awful_ rumors and—oh god.” She plops down on Leslie’s bunk. “What happened?”

“Everything awful.” Do they have tissues in here? She really needs a tissue. Ann seems to realize this and starts digging around in her cosmetic bag. “Wait, what is Joan saying?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t actually see Joan. Donna said it was bad, though,” Ann admits, handing Leslie a pack of tissues.

Donna returns right at that moment, with a peanut butter sandwich and a giant cookie. “Thanks, Donna,” Leslie says, although she doesn’t even want the cookie right now. “Do I want to know what Joan’s saying?”

Donna snorts. “You already do. She’s just repeating all that nonsense Lindsay screamed at you.”

“You had a fight with Lindsay?” Ann asks. “Oh, Leslie. I’m so sorry.”

“That wasn’t the worst part. Or maybe it was. I don’t really know,” Leslie says, trying not to cry on the cookie. She takes a deep breath. “Mark tried to kiss me. I mean, he did kiss me. Sort of.”

“Sort of? How did he sort of—”

“I thought he was going to try to do it, and I tried to get him to stop, but he just sort of did it anyway,” she says. How can she feel so numb and still want to cry so much at the same time? It doesn’t even make sense. “So I fought him off and ran back here and then Lindsay came in and…” Crap, she’s crying again and she can’t finish the sentence. Ann puts a comforting hand on her back, but that barely helps.

“Came in here and spouted a whole bunch of crazy,” says Donna. “I’m gonna leave you two alone.”

“You don’t have to,” Leslie chokes out, between sobs.

Donna shrugs. “I have to see a man about a thing.”

Ann watches her go. “Is she still with J.R.? Oh, sorry, Leslie. That doesn’t matter. What did Lindsay say?”

Leslie blows her nose. “She said everything. Like, everything awful she could think of. She thinks I’ve been mean to her for months and I talk about you too much and I’m jealous because you and Chris are going out. She thinks I went after Mark because of that. Then she called me a slut and said we weren’t friends anymore.”

There’s a pause, and then Ann says, “Oh.”

“See?” Leslie says. “You had to think about it too. She might be right. What if I _have_ been a terrible friend?”

Ann shakes her head, firmly. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” Leslie starts to protest, but Ann holds up her hand before Leslie can get any words out. “You haven’t been a terrible friend. You’re, like, not even capable of that. Honestly, Leslie, I haven’t said anything because I know you guys have been friends forever, but Lindsay is _awful_.”

“She didn’t used to be.”

“I know,” says Ann. “But people change. She called you a _slut_ , Leslie. That is so not cool. You should be really angry at her. And at Mark. He’s an asshole and you should be furious at both of them.”

“I guess.” Would feeling furious be better than feeling sad? She isn’t sure.

Ann sits up straight and tucks her hair behind her ears. “Okay,” she says. “Tell me _everything_ that happened.”

So Leslie does, starting with her suspicion that Mark might only have been going after Lindsay because he knew Ann was with Chris, and her decision to keep an eye on him at dinner, right through to the part where she’d asked Donna to go get Ann. Somehow, getting the words out makes her feel a tiny bit better. Only a tiny bit, though. Because no matter whose fault the fight is, even if it is one hundred percent Lindsay’s fault (and she’s sure it’s not; she really should have told Lindsay her suspicions instead of trying to be sneaky), she’s still lost one of her best friends.

“And then Ron came in here and asked if I’d been attacking people, because Mark is in the infirmary with a bag of frozen peas on his privates.”

“Really?” says Ann, giggling a little bit.

“Yeah. I guess there’s some swelling. You probably shouldn’t eat any peas for a while.”

“Good,” says Ann. “He deserves it. I wish you could knee Lindsay in the balls too.” She thinks for a moment. “But we have all that sports equipment. Say the word, and I will beat her senseless with a baseball bat. Or your hockey stick. That might be more convenient.”

Leslie has to smile at that one, a little bit.

“Anyway,” Ann says, handing Leslie the long-forgotten sandwich, “even if you were jealous, why would you go after Mark? You don’t even like any of the boys here. She should know that.”

The sandwich hits the floor as Leslie starts sobbing again. On top of everything else that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, now the guy she was kind of hoping _would_ kiss her is going to think she’s after Mark, or that she’s a slut, or a horrible friend, and all of those things are equally terrible…

“Okay, that’s enough,” says Ann, jumping down to clean up the sandwich. “You seriously need to stop crying. Start getting angry at them.”

“Ann,” she wails. “I think I need to tell you something.”

Ann just looks at her for a few moments, clearly thinking hard. Then her eyes widen and she nods, as though everything suddenly makes sense. “Is it Ben?”

Leslie hiccups, shocked. “How did you—”

“Process of elimination. There aren’t that many options.” She sighs. “Okay. I think we should give all of this Lindsay and Mark crap a few days to blow over before we start trying to do anything about Ben. Maybe even a week.”

Leslie takes a bite of the cookie, which thankfully hadn’t hit the floor. A week sounds like a long time, but then, it also might take her a week to get over feeling sad.

“And in the meantime, Leslie,” says Ann, “we need to have a _serious_ talk about flirting.”

Somehow, Leslie manages to get through the serious talk about flirting (it begins with Ann forbidding her to read any more issues of _Seventeen_ ) without mentioning the pen pal thing. It all seems so silly and naïve now, since her pen pal is obviously not going to reveal himself. But who needs pen pals, or boys, when you have friends like Ann? No one, that’s who.

***

“No, man, I’m serious,” says Darwish, banging his feet against the dryer. “They definitely had something going on.”

“It must have been pretty freaky,” adds J.R. from atop the other dryer. “Why else would Ann be warning everyone not to eat peas?”

Ben still isn’t convinced, mostly because he really doesn’t want to be.

“Even if it is true—”

“Which it is,” interrupts Darwish.

“Okay, so even if they were…doing that behind the rec building,” Ben says (he can’t get the actual words out, he just can’t), “what happened afterwards?” There are definitely some details that aren’t quite adding up for him, even though certain people (Joan, mostly) have been extremely insistent about exactly what happened between Leslie and Mark.

“Why do you care so much?” asks Darwish, suddenly looking suspicious.

“I just—no reason. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” They haven’t been talking about anything else for the past few days—or at least Darwish and J.R. haven’t. And since Chris is hanging out with Ann a lot of the time and Ben suddenly doesn’t like Mark very much at all…well, he’s learned a lot about MTV since Saturday.

“Yeah, it does,” Darwish insists. “Leslie got jealous of Ann, so she went after Mark, then decided he wasn’t worth it, and rejected him.”

“No, dude,” says Andy, who’s sitting in the doorway with his guitar. “You guys don’t go to school with them. Leslie doesn’t care about this stuff.”

“She’s just mad at Lindsay and decided to hit her where it hurts,” says J.R. with something approaching authority.

“Revenge,” agrees Darwish. “Knope’s got some style.” The dryer buzzes, and he hops down.

“Yeah, okay,” says Ben, pulling his clothes out of the dryer. Why are all these people even in the laundry room with him right now? They’re not doing laundry. He really doesn’t need to hear this. “Isn’t there anything else we can talk about?”

“Sure,” says Darwish, yanking a red plaid shirt out of the laundry basket. “We can talk about how awful your clothes are.”

What’s wrong with his clothes? “I like that shirt.”

“You shouldn’t. It looks like garbage.” J.R. nods in agreement.

“Whatever,” Ben mutters. He isn’t about to take fashion advice from somebody who is not only wearing an exact replica of Jordan Knight’s outfit from the music video for “The Right Stuff,” but has been boasting about the authenticity of said outfit (which frankly is the only reason Ben knows what it is).

He has, unfortunately, pretty much accepted that Leslie and Mark had been making out behind the rec building. It shouldn’t be all that surprising, even though he can’t think about it without feeling vaguely ill. He’d seen them at the campfire, after all. But…but whatever _had_ happened, he thinks it must only have happened once, because he’s pretty sure Leslie and Mark haven’t seen each other since.

There had definitely been a gigantic, screaming fight between Leslie and Lindsay. According to Lindsay, who absolutely will not shut up and has the further advantage of the very loudmouthed Joan being her new best friend, Leslie has secretly had it in for Lindsay for months now, and decided to make out with Mark just to piss off Lindsay (if that _was_ her strategy, it clearly worked), and Leslie is a slut.

According to Donna (who overheard the argument) and Ann (who was called in immediately afterwards), Mark initiated the whole thing, Leslie told him to stop but he didn’t, and Lindsay is a bitch.

According to Marcia, who also overheard the argument…well, Marcia won’t actually say the word “slut,” but she’s made it fairly clear that anyone who goes so far as to hold hands with a person of the opposite gender is a slut. No one wants to pay attention to Marcia, but she hasn’t shut up either, so it’s hard to ignore her.

Mark is claiming that he tripped over a tree root and pulled his groin, so he can’t run or do any strenuous physical activity for a couple of weeks. He isn’t saying a single word about Lindsay, Leslie, or Ann, and gets angry if anyone asks. He’s redirected his energies towards a slightly younger girl named Trish (successfully—Ben’s already walked in on them twice. They keep making out in the cabin in the middle of the day, as though Mark is hoping to be walked in on). Mostly Ben has been avoiding Mark as much as possible, which isn’t really that difficult since Mark isn’t playing baseball at the moment due to his pulled groin.

Ann is insinuating that Mark’s injury is something other than a pulled groin, but she won’t actually say what it is.

And Leslie—Leslie isn’t saying anything at all. She’s barely emerged from her cabin since whatever happened, happened. Everyone knows this, because Lindsay has been complaining rather loudly about the fact that it’s her cabin too and she can never go in there anymore because of _certain people_.

The weirdest thing Ben’s noticed is that Ann has started looking at him funny, like she’s trying to diagnose him or something. He has no idea why. She’s definitely still going out with Chris, and it’s not like she’d be into him even if she wasn’t, so…so he’s confused, he supposes.

It’s the fact that Leslie has ceased doing almost all of her ten thousand daily activities (basically everything but talent show rehearsals) that really makes him wonder what’s going on. A couple of times, he’s come perilously close to just walking into the rehearsals and asking her if she’s okay, but he knows perfectly well that that is a really dumb idea, and has restrained himself thus far. No, he’s just going to keep his head down and go about his business, because the last time he spent any time around Leslie she ignored him completely, and the last time he spoke to Leslie she yelled at him, and why does he want to keep doing this to himself?

Maybe he should write her a letter. Just to ask how she’s doing. Even if she can’t answer it—or she could, if she knows who he is, and then she could choose to answer it or not, and how would he feel if she did know and she didn’t answer…but then how would _he_ know what she knew, either way? God, this makes his head hurt.

He thinks he sees Ann spying on him as he carries his laundry back to the bunk, but…no, that’s a stupid thought, she’s probably just looking for Chris.

Honestly, what he really ought to do is figure out why this cabin smells so bad.

But he doesn’t have time for that now. He doesn’t even have time to put his clothes away. He has to leave for that stupid first aid certification course, or else he’s going to be late.

***

Leslie hates being late for anything, but she deliberately doesn’t get to the rec building until two whole minutes after the first aid course is supposed to have started. Jerry’s decided to make it mandatory for everyone twelve and older for some reason, which means that both Lindsay and Mark are going to be there and that it’s going to be crowded. Since Leslie absolutely does not want to sit near either Lindsay or Mark (or even see them) she’s sent Ann ahead as a lookout, and to save her a seat.

She arrives just in time to see Chris enthusiastically inviting Andy to sit in the saved seat, way up at the front of the room. Ann swats Chris on the arm and points at Leslie in the back, but he doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on and Andy’s already sitting in the chair anyway. Ann makes a disappointed face and mouths _I’m sorry_ , so Leslie mouths _It’s okay_ back at Ann. There’s got to be another seat somewhere, one that isn’t near Lindsay or Mark.

There is. One. It’s next to Ben, of course, and _crap_ , according to Ann she isn’t supposed to be talking to him for another three days.

Still, what choice does she have? At least she finally feels like she might be able to hold a conversation (with someone other than Ann or Ron or Donna) without bursting into tears. But this might be tricky. They haven’t fully devised a strategy yet, although Ann has warned her, in a surprisingly stern tone, that if she _does_ accidentally wind up around Ben, she is _not_ , under any circumstances, allowed to yell at him.

“Just act normal,” she whispers under her breath. That was what Ann had said to do. But what does normal even mean? What if she brings up the fall of Communism too much, or not enough? What if she has to use the bathroom, and needs to tell him that, and she can’t remember what it’s called? And isn’t this the boring thing that she’s supposed to be making fun? Wait, no, Ann told her to stop thinking about the magazine article.

Well, here goes nothing.

She slides into the seat, keeping her gaze straight ahead, towards the front of the room. Should she say hi? That might be a normal thing to do. But now she’s been sitting here for ten seconds. She probably should have said hi already. But better late than never, right?

Leslie takes a deep breath, turns her head, and…Ben flinches.

“Do you want me to go sit by Lindsay?” he asks, jerking his head at the nearest empty seat.

“What? No. Sit wherever you want, I don’t care.” Crap crap crap. He doesn’t want to sit next to her.

He doesn’t move, though.

Ben looks like he might be about to say something else, but just then, Jerry clomps loudly into the room, carrying a medium-sized box and calling greetings to everyone. This is odd. Where’s the first aid instructor? Leslie looks around. There are a few counselors here—Ron, Tammy, Kyle, Joe—but no first aid instructors.

“All right, everyone,” says Jerry. “I know you’re all here for the first aid certification course, but given recent, er, events, I think a slight change of plans is in order.” He puts the box on a folding table, takes off the lid, and pulls out a stack of pamphlets. “Ron, could you pass these around, please? We don’t have nearly enough, so you’ll all have to share with the person next to you.”

Oh god, that means Ben. She’s at the end of the row and there’s not even a chair on her other side, let alone a person sitting in it.

“Leslie,” Ron says quietly, handing her a pamphlet. She glances down at the cover, and no, no, no. Oh crap, this is getting worse. Emblazoned across the top are the words “Puberty is a Confusing Time for All of Us: A Series for Teens and Preteens.” This particular pamphlet is titled “Changes in the Female Body and What Girls and Boys Should Know about Them.” On the cover are two hideously drawn cartoon figures, a boy and a girl, holding hands in front of a giant floating question mark.

She can’t even.

At least she isn’t the only one. The whole rec building is full of giggles, groans, and shrieks (the shrieking sounds like it might be Darwish).

Reluctantly (she really doesn’t want to accidentally touch him, especially not when she’s holding this…thing), Leslie hands the pamphlet to Ben, who glances at the title and promptly drops it on the floor, like it’s on fire. “Sorry,” he mutters, leaning over to pick it up.

“So as you’re all aware,” says Jerry, perching himself on the front edge of the folding table, “there have been some recent…incidents, and I think it’s important to address them, and to discuss appropriate conduct for behavior at camp.”

Ron and Tammy are remarkably good at straight faces, Leslie thinks. How has Jerry not figured this out yet?

“Let’s begin on page one of the pamphlet,” suggests Jerry, opening his own copy. He shifts his weight a little, and the folding table collapses.

Ben gingerly flips the pamphlet open and holds it so that Leslie can see. Not that she wants to see this.

“Okay,” says Jerry, hoisting himself off the floor. “Page one. ‘Why are my breasts getting larger?’”

Two hours. He keeps them in the rec building for two hours without so much as a bathroom break, with Tammy and Joe guarding the exits so that no one can escape. By the second hour, Darwish (still overcompensating for his fainting spell, no doubt) has begun cracking very loud jokes, but that just earns him a stern talking-to from Ron. Jerry forces them to read “Changes in the Male Body” and “Appropriate Ways to Touch” (according to this pamphlet, there aren’t any other than handshakes) and “Why Do I Have a Funny Feeling Down There?” All the pamphlets are accompanied by those terrible illustrations and Jerry keeps _adding personal stories_ , which is probably the worst part of all.

Just when they’ve finally closed the last pamphlet and Leslie thinks this might be over, Tammy comes around with a mimeographed quiz.

“You’ll have to take this quiz in pairs too,” calls Jerry. “No one’s leaving until everyone has answered all the questions. Just write small. Put your names at the top.”

There’s a slight delay because Kyle forgot to get pencils like he was supposed to.

Leslie looks over the quiz while they wait for pencils. Oh, god, it’s not really a quiz, it’s workbook pages. _Personal_ workbook pages. Where did Jerry even _find_ this? Is he going to read their answers?

_One: When did you first start noticing changes in your body? What changes have you noticed thus far?_

_Two: When did you first notice that you were becoming attracted to the opposite sex?_

_Three: What kinds of physical contact have you had with members of the opposite sex? Do you think that contact was appropriate?_

It keeps going like that, an entire page of horrible questions. Leslie thinks she might spontaneously combust with embarrassment. She passes the page to Ben without looking at it, or him, and crap, she just accidentally brushed his arm.

“Good lord,” he says, quietly. From the corner of her eye (she’s still staring at her knees, she is not going to stop staring at her knees) she can see that Ben’s turned bright pink.

“Just…just fill it out and then I’ll…I won’t look,” she says.

He stiffens, and shoves the paper back at her. “Why should I have to fill it out first? Ron handed it to you.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, I’m just sitting at the end of the row,” she says. She isn’t going to take that paper. “You’re holding it. You fill it out.”

“I don’t want you to see any of my answers to these questions!” he says, sounding a little panicked.

“Well, I don’t want _you_ to see any of _my_ answers! That’s personal information.” Crap, she’s starting to yell again.

“Oh, but it’s okay if you see my personal information?”

“That isn’t what I said,” Leslie snaps. “Look. Just—just answer the questions on the front of the paper and then I’ll write on the back.”

“And how,” asks Ben, “are you going to know what the questions are, if you’re looking at the other side of the paper?”

“I don’t know!” She’s definitely yelling now, but Ann will just have to forgive her for this one. Surely an unexpected sex ed class (taught by _Jerry_ , no less) doesn’t count as “any circumstances.” She cannot be expected to know how to handle this situation. The room feels really hot, and small, and she just wants it to be over. “Fine. Give me that.” She snatches the quiz from Ben’s hand. “I’ll write on the front, and then I’ll copy the questions onto the back for you.” She grabs a pencil from Kyle.

“Fine,” Ben says. “Whatever. I just want to get out of here.”

“Don’t look,” she warns him, and he rolls his eyes at her and turns his back. She quickly scribbles slightly vague (but truthful, she can’t be dishonest) answers to all these stupid, horrible, embarrassing personal questions, then copies the questions onto the back. That takes slightly longer. It seems like they may be the only ones going to this extreme, although Darwish and J.R. are definitely having some sort of noisy argument across the room. A lot of people are handing in their forms already.

Finally, Leslie finishes copying the last question. She folds the paper in half, so that her answers are concealed in the middle, and hands it to Ben, along with the pencil. They’re pretty much the only ones left now.

“Leslie,” says Ben, sounding strained, “stop trying to read over my shoulder.”

What the hell? “I’m _not_ ,” she snaps. She isn’t. “I’m just making sure you don’t try to open the paper.”

“Why would I do that?” Now he’s almost yelling at her, too. “I don’t _care_ what you wrote. Just stop looking so I can get this over with.”

Part of her wants to trust him, because he’s obviously embarrassed by this too, and really, why would he want to know when she started her period or the exact nature of her “physical contact” with Mark?

On the other hand, it is absolutely crucial that she actively prevent him from finding out when she started her period and what the exact nature of her physical contact with Mark was.

“No way,” she says, through clenched teeth. “I’m not going to read. I just don’t have faith that you won’t peek.”

Ben glares at her, then shifts in his seat so that she can only see the top corner of the paper over his back. Every so often he glances back at her (like she would be going anywhere). Judging by the motion of his arm, it looks like he’s taking the additional precaution of making his writing so microscopic that no one will be able to read it. Crap, that’s a good idea, why didn’t she think of that?

She does wonder, a little bit, what he’s writing. _Not_ in regards to the puberty questions, of course—she absolutely does not want to know any of that, it’s gross. But she wouldn’t mind knowing how many girls he’s kissed. Just…just because. Although she would obviously never peek.

After a few minutes, he turns around. “There. I’m done. I didn’t try to look.”

“I know you didn’t,” says Leslie, annoyed. He doesn’t need to point that out; she was watching, after all. And he might have peeked by accident, somehow. She holds out her hand. “Here, I’ll go turn it in.”

“Oh, no,” he says, standing up. “Your answers are already hidden. _I’ll_ turn it in.”

“Fine, do that,” she snaps.

She follows him to the front of the room, just in case, but all he does is throw their form in the box with all the others.

“Jerry,” Leslie asks, “you’re not going to read these, are you?”

“What?” Jerry says, startled. “No, of course not. I’m going to throw them out. This was just to get you thinking. I know the teenage body can be very embarrassing. When I was your age, I—”

“Great,” she says, interrupting him. Somehow, now that the ordeal is over, she instantly feels a thousand times less stressed out.

She turns around, intending to say something—anything—to Ben that would lighten the tension, or maybe even apologize for getting so terse with him earlier. She should probably do that. No, she should definitely do that.

“Ben? I’m—”

But he’s already gone.

***

By the time Ben joins everyone else back in cabin six (well, everyone but Chris, Chris is out back doing push-ups) Darwish is already proposing that they never, ever bring up the sex ed seminar again.

“The girls in the drawings weren’t even hot,” he complains.

“I’m sorry, were you expecting them to be?” Ben asks, although like Darwish, he would be perfectly content to never bring up the sex ed seminar again either.

“The ones in _The What’s Happening to My Body Book for Girls_ are!” Darwish says. “I mean, technically they’re just line drawings like the pamphlets were, but the breasts are more accurately drawn, and they have five stages of development, not three.”

Mark, who’s barely said anything to any of them since the incident with Leslie, actually looks up at that. “Come on,” he says, sounding vaguely amused. “We all know you’ve never seen _real_ breasts.”

Darwish explodes into incoherent splutters, Andy starts laughing, and Ben returns to folding his abandoned laundry, praying that this conversation ends before he has to be involved in it.

He’d managed to keep Leslie from seeing any of his questionnaire responses, at least, even though she’d been so difficult about it. Given that he’d recognized her handwriting instantly, the last thing he’d wanted was for _her_ to recognize _his_ …not to mention that he doesn’t want _anybody_ to know that the extent of his “physical contact with a member of the opposite sex” thus far has been whatever happened with Katie at the graduation dance, even if he (like everyone else, apparently) suspects that Darwish is even worse off.

But no, of course he’s going to have to be involved in this conversation, because today is just determined to be shitty.

“Ben. Yo, earth to Ben,” calls Darwish, and Ben reluctantly looks up.

“What?”

“Dude, are you paying attention at all? We’re gonna get the cabin parties going again.”

Have they really ever stopped? Ben doesn’t think they have. But, whatever. “So?” he asks.

Darwish groans. “So, it needs to be more exclusive this time. Is there anyone you want to put on the list?”

He is really not following. “What list?”

“ _The_ list. Of girls. That we invite to the cabin.”

“You’re making a list of girls?”

“Yes, you nerd! Who do you want on it? One hot girl of your choosing. This is a limited-time offer.”

“I—whatever. I don’t care.”

“No, see, dude,” says Andy, suddenly jumping off his bunk and pulling Ben aside…very aside, like all the way out of the cabin. They stumble down the front steps as Andy drops his voice. “If there’s a girl that you _like_ …” His eyes widen, as though Ben isn’t getting the hint.

Ben just stares at him.

“Seriously,” Andy continues. “I know this is gonna sound weird since she just had that thing with Mark, but what about Leslie?”

First Jess, now Andy—he has _got_ to start flat-out denying that he likes anyone. “What _about_ Leslie?” he asks, fighting to keep his voice even.

“Well, when she was still coming to baseball and stuff, I thought I noticed a vibe,” says Andy, shrugging. “She’s obviously not going out with Mark or anything.”

He’s got to be kidding.

“No,” Ben says, sighing, “there’s no vibe, trust me.”

“ _And_ she sat next to you at the thing today,” Andy continues.

“She did,” Ben agrees. “And then she yelled at me the entire time. Couldn’t you hear her?”

“Well, still,” says Andy. “It’s an option, right?”

How did this conversation get worse than the one he’d just left? “Leslie is _not_ an option,” Ben insists. “She really doesn’t like me.”

“It’s weird that you would say that,” says Andy. “She pretty much likes everybody.”

Yeah, okay. He’s just going to walk away now.

“Darwish, you should put Leslie on the list,” calls Andy, loudly.

“Already done. She’s up at the top,” Darwish calls back. “Ben, anyone you want to add?”

Ben wonders briefly if he should find somewhere else to be at night, but…damn it, no, he’d rather be around her anyway. At least he didn’t have to put her on this absurd list.

“Nope,” is all he says.

“Nerd,” Darwish says, flipping his notebook shut.

But Ben can’t stop thinking about what Andy said, later that night, when the lights are off and Chris is between pees two and three.

_She pretty much likes everybody…I thought I noticed a vibe…_

If Andy, of all people, noticed a vibe…Andy’s not very attuned to the world around him, after all.

And honestly, at this point, what does he have to lose? What’s the worst that could possibly happen? Leslie gets angry and stops talking to him? She reveals him to the entire camp and they all get angry and everyone stops talking to him? It’s not like he’s ever going to see any of these people again anyway.

He’s going to do it. He’s going to do it just as soon as he can figure out how to sneak a letter to her.

When he finally falls asleep, he has that godawful nightmare with Steve and Cindy and the encyclopedias again, but this time Cindy has bright blonde hair and Steve is Mark Brendanawicz and for once, Ben’s glad that Chris can’t get up to pee without shaking the entire damn bunk bed and waking him up.

Before Ben goes to breakfast the next morning, he pulls that blank sheet of paper out of the back of his copy of _Lord of the Rings_ and writes a quick note. There’s no tape in the cabin’s first aid kit or anywhere else that he can find, but he manages to seal the note shut with a Band-Aid (which looks really dumb, but whatever) and shoves it in his pocket. Now he’s just got to figure out how to get it to Leslie before he loses his nerve.

The solution to this particular problem reveals itself just after Ben’s done eating breakfast, but before he gets up from the table. It turns out to be small and dark-haired and chewing a wad of watermelon Bubble Yum.

“Do you have a thing for Leslie?” April asks, bluntly, plopping down across from him.

“I—what—why would you—” Ben’s not sure he’s ever even heard April speak, and this is the first thing she’s going to say to him?

She shrugs, looking bored. “You were spying on our rehearsals, and then you stopped right after she kissed Mark.”

“Did Jess send you to ask me this?” God damn it, he forgot to deny liking the girl again.

“No. She doesn’t know anything.” April blows a large, sticky bubble, then pops it and stuffs the gum back in her mouth. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“Please don’t.”

“So do you have a thing for her?”

Ben sighs. In addition to learning how to deny things, he really ought to stop discussing his (lack of) love life with ten-year-olds. “It’s complicated.”

“Because you think she hates you.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question.

“April,” he asks, cautiously, “why do you care?”

She shrugs. “I don’t. But this camp is boring.” She leans over the table, raises one eyebrow, and tips an imaginary, tiny hat to him. Or he thinks that’s what she’s doing. It’s a strange gesture. “I’m well versed in the art of secret-keeping, guv’ner.”

“Why are you talking in a weird voice?”

“God,” she says, going back to normal. “Because I’m _bored_.”

Ben considers her for a moment. This idea he’s having is either incredibly brilliant or incredibly stupid.

What the hell. He reaches into his pocket and removes the note.

“You’re seriously good at keeping secrets?”

She gives him a huge, exaggerated wink. “My sister tried to get me to spill the beans once,” she says in the weird voice. “But it was a poor lookout for her, my good chap, because now she’s been eaten by wolves.”

“Right,” Ben says, half regretting this decision already—but no, he’s going to go through with it. “Okay, you know the pen pal thing from before camp?” April doesn’t react, which he supposes means yes. “Well, Leslie was mine, but she wanted to stay anonymous.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means no names. We wrote each other a bunch of letters and never used our names. And I figured out I’d been writing to her, but I don’t think she knows she was writing to me.”

“This is a dumb story,” says April, in her normal voice.

“Yeah, I know. But—”

“Why don’t you just tell her it was you?” she asks, and really, it is a logical question.

Ben sighs and places his Band-Aid-sealed note on the tabletop. “Can you just get this to Leslie without letting anyone know it’s from me? I mean _anyone_. Not Jess, not Ann, not anyone. And definitely not Leslie.”

“You want me to give Leslie a piece of paper and not say anything.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s pretty much it.”

April shrugs again. “Okay, guv’ner. Spot on. I’ll deliver this document for you post-haste.”

She gives him another one of those exaggerated winks before she leaves with his note, and tips the imaginary hat again, and oh god, Ben thinks. What on earth did he just do?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

“Okay, guys,” says Leslie, surveying the talent show cast. “Good work. See you tomorrow.” It really had been an unusually good rehearsal, she thinks. Lots of enthusiasm. Even April had seemed more interested than usual—she’d spent all morning talking in a funny voice. Maybe all their improv games were finally kicking in.

“Hey, Leslie,” Andy says, skating over to her. “Are you going to start playing baseball again? We could use you.”

She starts to wince a little bit, but tries to pass it off as a shrug. Andy doesn’t seem to have noticed anything odd. “I don’t know. Maybe,” she says.

“I don’t think Mark is gonna be there,” says Andy, widening his eyes. “You know, if that makes a difference.”

It does. So does the fact that Ben will almost certainly be there. She might be able to apologize for yesterday, which she feels like she really ought to do even though there are still two days left on Ann’s schedule.

“I’ll think about it,” she says.

“Awesome,” says Andy, hoisting his guitar over his shoulder. “So I’ll see you there?”

“Yeah, maybe,” replies Leslie. Andy skates away. He manages to get out of the door and down the steps without falling, for once. Why _does_ he always wear Rollerblades everywhere? He’s going to have to take them off at some point today; the sky is overcast and she’s pretty sure it’s going to rain this afternoon. Not even Andy can Rollerblade in the mud.

Once he’s gone, she leans over to pick up her talent show planning binder. A folded piece of notebook paper falls out of it and drifts silently to the floor.

That’s odd. Leslie always secures her loose papers in the pockets. And this paper is folded. She doesn’t fold anything because then it doesn’t sit neatly in the binder. And who would tape a piece of paper shut with a Band-Aid? That’s just weird.

So the real question is, why is there a strange piece of paper with a Band-Aid on it in her binder? Did someone put it there? Someone must have put it there.

Leslie shrugs to herself, and for a moment, she considers just throwing it away, but curiosity gets the better of her. She carefully peels off the Band-Aid and unfolds the paper.

It’s a note.

 _Dear Friend (well, Leslie),_ it starts. And she recognizes the handwriting at once.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Oh, crap.

He knows. He knows who she is.

She half sits, half collapses on the floor, cross-legged, and swallows. Her throat feels very dry, all of a sudden.

_Dear Friend (well, Leslie),_

_Hi. I guess that’s a good place to start._

_Look, I know this is weird. But I don’t think this summer is really going the way either of us thought it would. And—well, I don’t know exactly what to do about that, so I’m writing you. Mostly, I just wanted to ask you if everything is okay._

_Is everything okay?_

_You don’t have to answer. I don’t really expect you to. I don’t even know if you’ve figured out who I am, although it probably doesn’t matter that much anyway. And I hope I’m wrong about your summer not being what you wanted it to be._

_\- Your mysterious friend._

Okay. Leslie’s first reaction is that she has no idea how to react. Should she be happy that he’s made contact with her? Or should she be angry that he’s decided to do it this way, instead of just talking to her? Maybe she should make a list of possible reactions. Why did this take him so long, anyway?

Wait, she knows what her first reaction is. _How did he get this letter to her?_

He had to have put the note there this morning during rehearsal, because she’d gone through the entire binder last night, and there definitely hadn’t been anything mysterious in it then. She hadn’t left the binder alone at any point before rehearsal this morning, either.

So that pretty much leaves people who had been at rehearsal. She might have been distracted and not noticed someone opening the binder; that’s entirely possible. And the only boys involved in the talent show who are older than eleven are Andy, J.R., and…and Darwish.

Well, _that_ doesn’t even make sense. Her pen pal can’t possibly be Darwish, can he? But she knows her pen pal definitely isn’t from Pawnee, because of the raccoon stuff, and both Andy and J.R. definitely are from Pawnee.

It seriously cannot be Darwish. She is going to refuse to believe this. Not that she doesn’t like Darwish, because she does, but…no, he can’t possibly be the guy she has a crush on. He absolutely is not the guy she has a crush on. There is no possible universe in which she would _ever_ have a crush on Darwish.

Okay, she’s going to go back to the cabin and drop this binder off before lunch, and she’s going to start making a list of comparisons between Darwish and her pen pal while she does that.

One. _Star Wars_. Her pen pal likes it and Darwish does not. Unless he’s faking not liking it, to try to seem cooler or something? She supposes that might be possible, but it seems unlikely, given the long discussion they’d had about her dance number idea.

Two. Girls. Her pen pal has not revealed significant feelings on girls either way (apart from a general dislike for inadvertently walking in on people making out, which is totally understandable), whereas Darwish can’t shut up about them. That may or may not mean anything.

Three. Television. Her pen pal has never really mentioned it. Today, Darwish is wearing Hammer pants, and he’d spent twenty minutes complaining about having missed the last three episodes of _Yo! MTV Raps_ because Jerry won’t get the camp a cable subscription. She seriously doubts he could have filled out that initial questionnaire without mentioning _something_ about MTV, at least.

Four. Baseball. She’s seen Darwish try to play baseball, once, and he’s even worse than Orin. She’s not even sure he knows the difference between second base and shortstop.

This just doesn’t make any sense. Does she even need to go to five? Probably not.

In the cabin, she removes the newest note from the binder and hides it in the zipper pouch of her suitcase, with the other letters. This one didn’t come in an envelope, of course, so she tucks it in with the graduation speech.

Five. Speeches. She’s almost entirely sure Darwish couldn’t have written that speech.

If only her mother hadn’t put Pawnee School Board stickers over the return address and the stamp cancellation. She’d be able to see whether or not this letter came from South Carolina. It’s probably impossible to take the stickers off, but…

She tries anyway. No dice. The envelope just rips.

Wait a minute. If only _her mother_ hadn’t put Pawnee School Board stickers over the return address…and her mother had addressed all of Leslie’s outgoing letters…

 _Her mother knows who her pen pal is._ How could she have forgotten this?

Leslie checks her watch. 12:17. Her mother will be on her lunch break right now, so she probably won’t answer if Leslie calls the office. Well, she shouldn’t call the office anyway; Marlene hates being interrupted during the work day unless it’s an emergency, and this is only sort of an emergency.

So she just has to wait until tonight. Her mother usually gets home around 6:00, so she’ll add a fifteen-minute window and maybe an hour for dinner, to make sure Marlene is in a good mood. Okay, she’ll start trying to call home around 7:15. It’s not her scheduled day to make a phone call, but she’s sure she can talk Jerry into letting her use the phone anyway.

In seven hours, she’ll know for sure. And maybe once she knows, she’ll be able to figure out how she ought to feel about all of this. Because right now, she’s torn between feeling giddy that he cares enough to sneak her a note just to ask if everything is okay, and feeling kind of furious that he obviously knows who she is and isn’t brave enough just to _ask her_ if everything is okay, which it really seems like he should do, if he’s so concerned.

She wonders how long he’s known. _Why hasn’t he said anything to her?_ This is so perplexing.

She tries to imagine making out with Darwish in the art supply closet as she walks up to the mess hall, and wow, that is so not going to work.

“Leslie, over here,” calls Ann as soon as Leslie enters the buffet line, but Leslie shakes her head. She needs to do some investigating on her own. Careful investigating, she thinks. It had all gone so wrong last time. But this is different, or at least she hopes it’s different. She grabs a couple of slices of pizza and heads over to where most of the boys are sitting.

“Yo,” says Darwish, as Leslie slides into a seat across from him. It looks like he’s trying to build a house of cards, only with pizza slices. “Check this out. Leaning tower of pizza.” It isn’t working at all.

“Seriously?” she asks, biting into a slice of pepperoni.

“It’s never going to stand up,” says a voice in her left ear, and crap, Leslie totally didn’t notice that Ben just sat down next to her. “The crust doesn’t have enough structural integrity.”

“Shut up, nerd,” says Darwish. “I always call pizza that whether it stands up or not.”

“And how often does it stand up?” asks Ben, taking a bite of salad.

“So far, it never has, but that isn’t the point,” says Darwish. “The point is, it’s an awesome thing to call pizza.”

“Ooh. Have you tried propping it up with silverware or something?” asks Andy, excitedly.

Darwish snaps his fingers. “Excellent idea. Pass me a food rake.”

No one knows what a food rake is.

“Fork. Pass me a fork,” Darwish says, impatiently. J.R. steals Ben’s, since of course he’s the only one eating salad and therefore the only one who has a fork.

“You know, I was using that,” Ben remarks, but no one pays him any attention.

“Question,” says Leslie.

“Look, I’m gonna get this to work, okay?” says Darwish.

“It’s not a question about pizza. It’s about rehearsal this morning.”

“No, Leslie,” he sighs, “I don’t think Jerry is going to let you use pyrotechnics, especially not after you set yourself on fire. Although, not gonna lie, it would be awesome if you burned down the entire rec building.”

“That wasn’t what I was going to ask you,” she says, annoyed. “I want to know if you did anything to my binder.”

“What?”

“Did you, like…” and crap, how much should she give away here? “Did you mess with it? Like, did you move my stuff around, or—or put anything in it, like a piece of paper?” She narrows her eyes, watching him closely for a reaction, but she doesn’t get one. Ben suddenly coughs hard a couple of times, though.

“Sorry,” he says, gasping a little. “Soda. Carbonation. Wrong way.”

“I didn’t go near your binder, jeez,” says Darwish, rolling his eyes at Ben, and Leslie couldn’t say for sure whether he’s lying, but she strongly suspects that he isn’t.

“Well, someone did,” she mutters, picking a stray green olive off her pepperoni slice.

So lunch is kind of a bust. Well, on one front at least.

Leslie waits until Ben gets up from the table, hoping he’ll leave by himself. So far, so good. She follows him at a safe distance, until he gets far enough away that she thinks they won’t be overheard by anyone around the mess hall.

“Ben?” she calls, hurrying to catch up with him.

He turns around, abnormally fast. “Yeah?”

“Um,” she says, slightly taken aback, “I just—I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About yesterday.”

“Oh,” he says, slowly. “Okay.” She thinks he looks a little…disappointed? It’s hard to tell.

“I, um, I shouldn’t have gotten so upset about the quiz stuff. I didn’t really think you would look, just…”

He shakes his head. “No, I get it. That whole thing was kind of horrifying.”

Leslie feels herself smiling, just a tiny bit, and she plops down in the grass. “It was _awful_.”

“I realized later,” Ben says, “that we should have just lied about those questions. I bet everyone else did.”

“Oh crap, I bet you’re right,” she says. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

He shrugs, and finally sits down, sort of next to her but farther away than she really wants. “I don’t know. I’m not a very good liar.”

“Yeah, me either.” Leslie starts pulling blades of grass out of the ground, tearing them into tiny pieces. She thinks Ben might be looking at her, and it feels a little weird, but maybe good that he’s finally noticing her? She hopes her hair isn’t doing anything crazy. She’d tried braiding it herself this morning, and she suspects that it looks a lot better when Ann braids it for her.

“Well,” Ben says, after an uncomfortably long silence, and he starts to get up.

“You know I didn’t want any of that stuff to happen with Mark, right?” Leslie blurts out. Wow, she had no idea she was going to say that. But now that she _has_ said it, she realizes that she really does want Ben to know the truth, just—well, just because, she supposes, even though yesterday she was desperately trying to prevent him from knowing it. He freezes momentarily, then sits back down.

“I, um—” Now Ben’s tearing little bits of grass out of the ground, and he’s stopped looking at her. “Honestly?” he says, eventually. “ I don’t even really know what did happen.”

“What,” says Leslie, trying to keep her tone sort of ironic, or light-hearted, or _something_ , “didn’t Joan pop by and give your entire cabin a play-by-play account?”

“Oh, yeah. Probably five or six times,” he says. “But I kind of have this feeling that she might not be the most reliable source of information.”

“You have no idea,” Leslie mutters.

“So, um…” he says, sounding a little hesitant, “what…what did happen?”

Leslie takes a deep breath. Should she tell him? How _much_ should she tell him? “You want the short version or the long one?”

“Um, whichever,” he says, staring at the ground. “I don’t—however much you want to—whatever is fine.”

Maybe she shouldn’t say too much. This is really the first time he’s ever acted like he might be interested in talking to her, after all, and she doesn’t want to freak him out. So she tells him what seems like a medium-length version, starting from the point where she’d decided to try and figure out whether Mark was interested in Lindsay or not.

“And the next thing I knew,” she says, gulping a little because the hard part is coming up, “he was grabbing my arm and I couldn’t get away, and I told him to stop but he didn’t. He just sort of…did it, for like a really long time, with his tongue and everything, so I—so I kind of kneed him in the balls to get him off of me.” Ben looks slightly nauseous now. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned that last part. “And then I had that whole fight with Lindsay, and that was just as awful.”

Ben doesn’t say anything for a few moments, and she’s just starting to get nervous when he finally blurts out, “You really never had a thing for Mark?”

“No! Jeez, of course not,” she says. “Why would I? I already thought he was gross before all that.” Crap. If Ben doesn’t believe her… A thousand unpleasant thoughts start running through her mind, and it’s all she can do not to say them all out loud, all at once. What if Lindsay sent him to extract information from her, to use as ammunition? What if _Mark_ sent him to extract information from her? What if Ben starts telling everyone she’s been lying the entire time, and she really is both a slut and a horrible friend?

“Leslie, calm down,” Ben says, a little stiffly.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she says, and there goes her voice, getting uncontrollably loud again. Crap. She takes a deep breath, willing herself not to yell at him.

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” he says, and now he sounds nervous, like he expects her to blow up at any moment, which…crap, she does tend to do that.

“Because you’re friends with Mark,” Leslie says, compulsively pulling out her ponytail holder and shaking her hair out of its braid. She’s sure it looks terrible and she needs to re-braid it, right this instant.

“Not really,” Ben says.

“Oh.” What does that mean, “not really”? Maybe she should ask for clarification. Would that be weird? She finishes her braid in silence.

A drop of water falls on her hand, and they both look up to see that the clouds have darkened considerably.

“So, no baseball this afternoon,” Leslie says, standing up.

“I guess not,” Ben says.

Another few raindrops fall, and they both start back to the cabins.

“The thing I don’t understand,” Ben says abruptly, and oddly enough it looks like he’s blushing a little bit, “is why you’re even friends with Lindsay in the first place. She’s kind of terrible.”

“Everyone keeps saying that!” Leslie exclaims. “Look, she didn’t used to be. She used to be awesome, and then—then she just—I don’t know. She got all obsessed with trying to be popular, I guess. That’s when all the Mark stuff started.” She sighs. “It’s just—she’s been my best friend for pretty much as long as I can remember. I didn’t want to give up on that. I still don’t, but she won’t talk to me, so I can’t apologize.”

“Being your best friend doesn’t automatically make her popular?” he asks, and Leslie has the funny feeling that he wishes he hadn’t said it, especially after she automatically looks at him like he’s insane. Crap, she didn’t mean to do that.

“I’m not really popular,” she says, puzzled. “Maybe here, kind of, but definitely not at school.” More raindrops have been sprinkling them, and Ben’s hair is all damp and it’s starting to stick up kind of funny, and she has to fight a sudden urge to run her fingers through it.

“Well,” he says, staring at his shoes. They’re back between cabins six and seven now. “I guess I’m going this way.”

“Okay,” Leslie says. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees.

She thinks Ben might be hesitating, and she almost invites him into her cabin because she really doesn’t want to stop talking to him. But, considering that twenty minutes ago he probably thought she was a slut, that’s almost certainly not a good idea.

As it turns out, Leslie is the only person to have gone back to the cabin, and it suddenly occurs to her that most people hang out in the rec building or the mess hall when it rains. She’s probably missing a few rounds of Monopoly or charades or something. But this is good. She’s alone and she can spread out all her correspondence on the bed without worrying that anyone is going to interrupt her. Maybe if she reads these letters with Darwish’s voice in her head, the idea that he’s her pen pal won’t seem so contradictory.

But she’s not even halfway through the first page of the graduation speech when she realizes that she isn’t hearing Darwish’s voice in her head at all. She’s hearing _Ben’s_ voice.

And suddenly she knows. She just _knows_ , just like that. And it makes perfect sense. Ben isn’t from Pawnee and he’s really good at baseball, and he seems to like _Star Wars_ , and he doesn’t let on what he thinks about girls, and she doesn’t think he cares about MTV at all. More importantly, she can totally, totally understand how the guy she’s been watching patiently coach the younger kids at baseball and take care of his little sister would have written this speech about community and hard work and volunteering, and…

_Why hadn’t he just said something?_

And basically, now Leslie feels like the world’s biggest idiot, because yeah, she’d suspected that Ben might have been her pen pal before, but she should have figured this out for sure a long time ago. Instead, she’d been…alternately yelling at him and ignoring him. A lightning bolt goes off in her head, and she suddenly understands, with a truly awful sense of clarity, exactly how terrible she must have been making him feel this entire time, with all the yelling and the ignoring.

That probably explains why he’s so jumpy around her. Crap.

But he’d still wanted to know if she was okay, had gone out of his way to somehow get her that note this morning, which means he must have told someone else, because she definitely hadn’t seen him anywhere near rehearsals.

And, wait a minute. He told someone else, but not her? Frankly, she finds that kind of infuriating. _She_ hadn’t told anyone else, not even Ann. And what did he mean by _I don’t even know if you’ve figured out who I am, although it probably doesn’t matter that much anyway_? Why would he think it wouldn’t matter? Is it because he doesn’t like her? But if he doesn’t like her, why had he been nice just now? And why would he have written that letter in the first place?

On top of all this, why does stupid Ben have to be so stupidly cute? Even though she’s sort of furious with him right now, she can still totally picture herself making out with him in the art supply closet, and _that_ thought just makes her angrier with herself, because she so does not need to be thinking about making out with him at this particular moment.

And before Leslie knows it, she’s crying again, although she isn’t sad, exactly. No, she’s angry. She’s angry at Ben for not telling her, and she’s angry at herself for not figuring it out sooner, and she’s angry at Lindsay for turning into an awful person, and she’s angry at Ann for telling her that the magazine advice was good, and she’s angry at Mark for ruining her first kiss, and she’s also angry at herself for crying about all of it, because she _never_ cries. She really cannot remember ever having felt so frustrated before.

About an hour later, after she’s cried herself out and slowly regained the ability to breathe through her nose, Leslie still isn’t sure what she should do. She isn’t even sure if she should talk to Ann. She definitely doesn’t want to talk to her mother about this, not anymore.

But she’s going to have to say something to Ben at some point. Isn’t she?

***

Great, Ben thinks, as he enters cabin six. Freaking great. _After_ he writes Leslie a note—a note which she clearly received and read— _then_ he suddenly develops the ability to have a normal conversation with her. Of course it would happen that way. And of course she doesn’t seem to think he was the one who sent the note.

And of course this cabin smells even worse. Seriously, what is going on in—

Okay, _that_ makes sense, at least. Andy’s been in here at some point, and he’s moved his mattress and left his junk food stash exposed, and good lord, are those _sandwiches_? They’re either sandwiches or some sort of decaying animal. Ben really hopes they’re sandwiches, although he doesn’t want to get all that close to them. Someone has to do this, though, and Andy clearly isn’t going to. And at least if he’s going to be stuck in here, alone, in the rain, this will give him something to do to keep his mind off of how much he’s obviously screwed things up with Leslie.

There aren’t any latex gloves in the first aid kit, but he manages to find a spare plastic bag to put over his hand, like he’s picking up dog poop. Oh, god, this is gross. There are like five sandwiches in here, and maybe a burrito, and they’re all oozing and moldy, and…

Even after he’s disposed of all of Andy’s food stash (even the candy seems suspect now, so he throws that out too) and knotted it into multiple plastic bags, and opened all the windows in the cabin, and turned on Darwish’s weird high-tech fan, and wiped down as much as he can with rubbing alcohol from the first aid kit (because of course there are no cleaning supplies, why would there be cleaning supplies, this camp doesn’t even have Scotch tape), the cabin still kind of stinks. The smell isn’t nearly as bad as it was, but…

It doesn’t take him very long to identify Andy’s dirty laundry as the source of the smell. Or Andy’s clothes, he should probably say, because all of Andy’s things are jumbled together on a shelf. Ben really can’t tell what’s what, and he sort of suspects Andy can’t either.

Well, he might as well do Andy’s laundry, too.

He finds a pad of Post-It notes on one of Chris’s shelves, scribbles _Meet me in the laundry room if you get this_ on one and sticks it on Andy’s guitar case, and then he gingerly scrapes Andy’s stuff into a basket and throws his book on top.

Oh, right, it’s still raining. He’ll just wait here for a while. No, he’ll go find Andy. No, he’ll wait. God, why does being stressed out make him want to clean things? That is so not normal.

Maybe he should go talk to Leslie? He sticks his head out of his cabin. Her cabin’s door is shut and he can’t tell if she’s in there or not.

Damn it.

He peels the Post-It note off of Andy’s guitar case and throws it away, and puts his book back on the top bunk.

The rain finally stops during dinner, when Ben is still trying to figure out if Leslie is avoiding him on purpose or just not seeking him out. She’s sitting with Ann, and that’s not exactly unusual behavior for her, so whatever, maybe.

“Where were you all afternoon?” Andy asks, or Ben thinks that’s what he asked, because Andy and Darwish have a bet going as to how many meatballs will fit in Andy’s mouth at once. They’re up to three so far.

“Cleaning the cabin,” Ben says. “I, um, I found your sandwiches.” Andy looks blankly at him and tries to cram in a fourth meatball. “Those were sandwiches, right?”

Andy shrugs, starts coughing, and doesn’t quite manage to get the half-chewed meatballs onto a plate.

“Oh, sick,” laughs J.R.

“Is this a good time to ask you about laundry?” Ben says.

“Laundry?” says Andy, like he’s never heard the word before, wiping tomato sauce off his mouth with his shirt.

“Have you washed your clothes since you got here?”

Andy laughs. “No. It’s only been two weeks. They’re good for at least another month, right?”

Darwish’s jaw drops, and he mimes puking onto the floor.

“So,” Ben says, turning to him, because he figures Darwish might actually be on his side here, “I figured out what the funny smell in the cabin was.”

“Dude,” says Darwish, recovering, “we absolutely cannot have an exclusive party cabin with your rancid laundry stinking up the place. You have to do something about that, pronto.”

Andy shrugs again. “Okay. What do I do?”

Ten minutes later, they’re in the laundry room, and Ben somehow finds himself explaining that no, you can’t just put a bar of Zest in the washing machine and expect it to have the same effect as laundry soap.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he says, as patiently as he can manage. He’s not even going to bother with the part about separating the lights from the darks, especially since he really doesn’t want to touch any of Andy’s clothes in the first place.

“Why do you even know how to do this?” Andy asks. “My mom does my laundry.”

“Mine too, most of the time, but come on, this is a necessary life skill.” It’s probably pointless. Andy is already humming the “Zestfully clean” jingle and wondering, loudly, if he can figure out how to play it on the guitar.

Never mind. He’ll just do it himself, this time, and maybe in another week or two they can try again—

“Oh, hey, Leslie,” says Andy.

“Hi,” she says. She’s carrying a laundry basket, but there aren’t any clothes in it. “Andy, could you leave us alone for a moment?”

Andy is only too eager to do so, and takes the opportunity to make a variety of weird faces at Ben as he goes. Several of these faces include prodigious amounts of exaggerated winking.

“Um,” Ben says, trying to ignore Andy. “Did you forget your laundry?”

“No,” she says, turning the laundry basket over. A bunch of opened envelopes hit the floor, all covered partially in big green stickers and partially in…oh shit.

Ben suddenly feels slightly sick to his stomach, and it’s almost certainly not related to the stench that’s still wafting out of the open washing machine.

“These are yours, right?” she asks, and her voice goes up at the end, but it definitely isn’t a question.

“Yes.” It would be pointless for him to deny it, and besides, he isn’t a very good liar. He’d told her so himself, earlier today. And—and he’d wanted this to happen, right?

Looking at her face makes him kind of unsure about whether he’d wanted her to figure it out or not.

“And were you planning on telling me at some point?” Her voice is controlled, almost icy.

He’s trying very hard to get words to come out, but they just won’t. He can’t even seem to make any sounds right now.

“That’s what I thought,” she says. “Here.”

She hands him a penguin-covered envelope, collects his letters from the floor, and walks away.

Well, this ought to be pleasant, like in the same way that going to the orthodontist to have his braces adjusted is pleasant.

_Dear Ben,_

_I’m writing this down because I don’t want to accidentally say anything I don’t mean. But I’m going to give my letter to you in person because (unlike you, apparently) I still haven’t told anyone a single word about this whole situation, not even Ann. My guess is that you have Jess doing your dirty work, and I guess I can see where she might have figured it out on her own since you live with her and stuff, but can I be honest? I’m kind of ticked off that you didn’t just tell me yourself._

_That’s all I’ve really figured out so far. But rest assured, I am thinking very hard about everything, and when I do figure out how I feel, I’ll let you know._

_Leslie_

Yeah, he doesn’t have any idea what that means.

The fact that he doesn’t see her for the next twenty-four hours seems like a pretty good indication of how she feels, though.

***

Leslie can’t sleep. Last night she told Ann that she felt fine and she wasn’t upset, but she doesn’t feel fine and she is upset, and she can’t sleep.

She checks her watch. It’s 4:30. That’s probably too early to get up, even for her.

A cabin door creaks open and shut somewhere outside and yes, that’s it, she can get up safely. (Tammy is sleeping. She knows Tammy is sleeping, because Tammy talks in her sleep. She says very disturbingly explicit things in her sleep, does Tammy, and now all of cabin seven knows stuff about Ron that they really never wanted to know.)

Quickly, Leslie pulls a sweatshirt over her sleep t-shirt, jams her feet into her sneakers without the benefit of socks, and dashes out the cabin door.

“Morning, Leslie,” says Ron, nodding slightly.

“I don’t have a rod,” she confesses. “But I can’t sleep. Can I come with you?”

Ron doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no either, so she follows him to his Buick. The grass is wet with dew and her feet are soaked within seconds, but it’s such a relief to get out of the cabin that she doesn’t even care.

“I’ve got a spare rod in the trunk,” says Ron, as they climb in the car, and Leslie nods gratefully. She buckles her seatbelt even though they’re only driving from one side of the campground to the other (you never know when you’re going to hit a giant raccoon) and stares out the window as they drive past all the cabins. Camp was so much _easier_ when she was younger, she thinks, remembering when she was ten and slept where Shauna, April, and Jess are sleeping now. Is everything just going to get more complicated as she gets older? That’s kind of a depressing thought.

It only takes a few minutes to get to Ron’s fishing spot, a small bend in the nearby river that passes just onto the edge of the campground before it loops away again. Ron hands her the spare rod and a bucket of night crawlers, and she baits the hook expertly, just the way he taught her three summers ago.

“Remember how to cast?” he asks, but that’s a stupid question, of course she does. She demonstrates, and Ron nods approvingly.

The fish are not biting at all this morning, but Leslie doesn’t really care and it kind of seems like Ron doesn’t, either.

“Ron?” she asks, after over an hour of total silence. “What do you do when you like somebody?”

He sighs. “Leslie, we’re fishing, not sharing personal stories.”

“Come on, Ron,” she pleads. “I need to know.”

“Why?” he asks, suspiciously, and oh crap, he doesn’t think—

“It doesn’t have anything to do with _you_ ,” she says, hastily. “It’s—I mean, I’m speaking generally here.”

The sun hasn’t exactly come up yet, but Leslie can see well enough to tell that Ron is eyeing her warily. “Why?” he asks again.

She sighs. “Okay, I’m not speaking that generally.”

“This isn’t any of my business, and on top of that, I don’t care.”

“But just say that I—well, not me, say that somebody decided they liked somebody else, and didn’t know what to do about it. What should they do? I mean, I already—I mean, what if this person had already done all the normal things like make idea lists and consult their best friend, and the right things still didn’t happen? Then what?”

Ron exhales, one of those slow, deep, prolonged exhales where he sounds a little bit like an angry buffalo, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Leslie, you and I both know that this is not a hypothetical situation, is it?”

“No,” she admits.

“Well, if it’s Mark,” he says, “you should continue to do what you already did.”

“Of course it’s not Mark,” she snaps. Ron doesn’t react. She takes a deep breath and lets it out again. “Does it matter who it is?”

“It does not, because as I said before, I don’t care,” says Ron.

But she knows he really does, or else he wouldn’t be telling her to stay away from Mark.

“So let’s just say,” she says, “hypothetically—”

Ron groans.

“Let’s just say that someone—okay, it was me—let’s just say that I got my pen pal assignment for this summer and I decided that it would be fun not to tell each other who we were, and my pen pal went along with it, and then it turned out he wasn’t a girl like I thought he would be, and I sort of got a crush on him from his letters but I didn’t tell anyone about the letters at all until I told you just now—I mean I haven’t even told Ann,” she says, in a huge rush.

“Don’t care,” says Ron, recasting.

“And then I might have freaked out a little before I got here and read some dating advice in a magazine and then Ann said that—”

“Leslie,” Ron says, slowly, “calm down.”

She takes another deep breath. Warm brownies. One thousand, nine hundred ninety-three…

“Who is this non-hypothetical young man?” Ron chokes out, as though the words are causing him a great deal of pain.

“Ben.”

“You hate Ben. That’s been incredibly obvious to anyone within hearing range.”

Crap, even Ron thinks she hates Ben? “I do not hate him,” she insists. “I like him. I just—I took some dating advice the wrong way.”

“Well, he thinks you hate him,” Ron says.

“How do you know that? Did he say something to someone, or to you?”

“Leslie, teenage boys don’t talk about their feelings with each other. _Adult men_ don’t talk about their feelings with each other.”

“Then how is anyone supposed to know what’s going on?” she asks, feeling more and more desperate by the second.

Ron groans again, and he actually reels in his line and stares directly at her. “If you decide you like a person, you man up and tell him that,” he says. “And if you screwed something up along the way, you man up and tell him that too. Apologize and be direct. It’s that simple.”

Yeah, that’s what she was afraid of.

“What if I can’t?” she asks, because she’s really not sure she can say those things. “Or what if I already sort of started to say something, but I didn’t really say it?”

“Then you’re going to dig yourself into a deeper hole than you’re already in,” Ron says, pulling a dead worm off his hook. “Beating around the bush doesn’t help, Leslie. Teenage boys are complete idiots, even the smart ones.”

Crap.

When she was ten, she felt like she could do anything. Heck, a few weeks ago, she felt like she could do anything. Why doesn’t she feel like she can do this?

They don’t catch a single fish the entire morning, or even feel a bite, and Ron is gracious enough to pretend that it doesn’t matter. They pack up the gear and load up the Buick and drive back to the cabins, passing the boys—well, really it’s down to Chris and Ben, everyone else has given up by now—running backwards up a hill by the lake. She doesn’t think Ben saw her in the car. She hopes he didn’t. She’s so not ready for that.

Leslie spends a good long while showering that morning, making absolutely sure she doesn’t have any worm bits under her fingernails or lingering weird fish smells in her hair. Rehearsal will be fine without her. They don’t really need to be rehearsing every single day anyway. She skips breakfast and convinces Donna to bring her a sandwich for lunch. Lindsay yells at her some more for never leaving the cabin, but Leslie has too many conflicting feelings about everything else to really care what Lindsay thinks right now.

Mid-afternoon, just when she’s finally come to the conclusion that Ron is totally, completely correct (damn it), there’s a knock on the cabin door and Andy bounces in, jumping up all three steps at once.

“Hey, boss,” he says. “Wow, your cabin’s super clean. It smells good in here.”

“Hey,” she says, listlessly.

“So, Ben asked me to give you this,” he says, holding out a stack of folded Post-It notes, “and I’m supposed to tell you that I did not read these and he didn’t tell me anything and I don’t have any idea what’s going on between you two.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Leslie, taking the notes.

“Seriously, what _is_ going on between you two?” Andy asks.

“Nothing,” Leslie says, sighing a little.

“That is exactly what Ben said,” Andy replies. “And I do not believe him either.”

“You should,” she says. “Nothing’s going on.”

As soon as she convinces Andy to leave, Leslie unfolds the Post-Its and peels them apart. It looks like the first few contain one longish message, so she spreads them out on the bed.

_1) For the record, Jess isn’t involved in this at all, so even if you’re mad at me (I assume you are), please don’t take anything out on her. April delivered my last note, and I didn’t really have to tell her very much. She’d already guessed a lot of it. I don’t really know how. I didn’t tell Andy anything either, but just so you know, he thinks we have a “vibe,” whatever that means. Don’t worry, I tried to make very clear that there is absolutely nothing between us._

The last Post-It just says _2) I’m sorry._

God, he really _does_ think she hates him, doesn’t he?

Leslie stacks all the Post-Its back together, refolds them, and shoves them in the secret zipper compartment of her suitcase. Then she flips open her field hockey binder for a clean sheet of paper. It’s time to write up a plan, she thinks.

Tucked into the back pocket of her binder is that magazine article. She’d forgotten that she’d ripped it out of the magazine so Ann wouldn’t see what she’d scribbled in the margins.

Maybe this will help. Maybe she doesn’t need to write out a plan. It’s almost dinnertime. She’s just going to go find him in the mess hall, and try to explain everything. At the very least, he deserves to know that she doesn’t hate him. And if she can’t explain…well, she doesn’t really want to think about that.

***

Even though he’s starving (he was too nervous to eat much for breakfast or lunch), Ben can’t bring himself to set foot in the mess hall that night, not when he hasn’t heard a word from Leslie all day. He doesn’t think he could bear seeing her, or trying to act normal around her in front of everyone else. Right now, he just wants to be alone. So he hides in the bathroom until everyone else has gone up to dinner (way to act confident, there, he thinks; clearly his summer self-improvement project isn’t working at _all_ ), then grabs his book and heads for the sports field. Jerry still hasn’t had the rogue light fixed—it doesn’t give off _much_ light, true, but the sun won’t go down all the way for at least another hour, and there’s one part of the bleachers, halfway to the top, that Ben knows will stay bright enough for him to read all night, if he wants to keep avoiding everyone.

Now if only he could focus on the book. This chapter just seems to be dragging on and on and on without anything happening. Either it’s going to take seventy-five years to get through the mines of Moria, or…he flips backwards. Yeah, he’s been reading the same three pages for god knows how long.

Freaking great. It would be easier to concentrate if he wasn’t so hungry. If only he hadn’t thrown out Andy’s junk food collection...well, Andy might have started a new stash already, but in order to find out he’d have to go back to the cabin, and other people will be in the cabin—if not now, then they will be soon. The bleachers stopped being comfortable quite some time ago; maybe he should go sit somewhere else.

No, he shouldn’t. So what if his ass hurts and the back of the next row is digging into his spine? He deserves it, he’s sure.

He’s halfway through yet another attempt to get a particularly long passage to stick in his brain when he hears footsteps coming towards him, crunching softly over the dirt path.

“Ben?”

It’s Leslie. Of course it’s Leslie.

“What do you want?” he asks, flatly, keeping his gaze on his book.

From the corner of his eye, he can see her flinch a little, but she stands her ground. “I want to talk to you,” she says, and for once her tone is quiet instead of combative. “Can I come up?”

He shrugs. They might as well get this over with. It’s going to happen eventually, and better here in private than in front of the entire camp.

“I guess so,” he says, and he scoots over a little bit.

She hands him a paper plate with a cheeseburger and a bag of Lays on it. “Here, take this,” she says, hoisting herself up into the bleachers. After she’s settled, he tries to give the plate back to her, but she shakes her head. “I brought that for you.” She pulls a can of orange soda from the back pocket of her cutoffs and hands him that, too. “Sorry about the Lays. All the Ruffles were gone, so it was either these or Fritos.”

“How did you know where I was?” Ben asks, looking suspiciously at the plate. Why is she being thoughtful? Is this some sort of trick? “And why did you bring me a cheeseburger?” He puts everything on the seat between them, like a barrier, like a cheeseburger and an orange soda are going to be an adequate line of defense against the full-on Leslie Knope onslaught that he’s expecting.

“Because,” says Leslie, suddenly sounding nervous, “you weren’t at dinner and I thought—I thought that might be because you didn’t want to see me.” She pulls a napkin out of her pocket, but instead of putting it with the plate, she starts tearing it into tiny pieces. “And I didn’t want you to be hungry all night just because I’ve been acting really awful.” She rolls each napkin piece into a tiny ball, placing each completed ball back into her pocket, not looking at him. “It’s probably cold, though. I didn’t know where you were. I’ve been looking for you for a while.”

Well, this is weird. Leslie actually sounds…kind of vulnerable, to be honest. It would probably be pretty rude of him not to eat the cheeseburger, even if it is cold. He lifts up the top bun a little, and peers under it.

“I put lettuce, tomato, and mustard on it,” Leslie says, still not looking at him. “That’s how you like it, right? No ketchup?”

And it’s that one little admission, that Leslie knows he doesn’t like ketchup on his cheeseburgers even though he’s never said a single word about it to anyone at this camp, that somehow makes Ben’s heart start beating abnormally loudly. He closes his book and carefully puts it between his feet, moving as slowly as possible, wondering...no, he shouldn’t wonder. She remembers everything about everybody, he’s sure of that.

“Leslie,” he says, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “why—why are you here?”

“Because I think I owe you an apology,” she says, rolling another piece of napkin between her fingers. “For everything. For the whole summer, really.” She sighs. “I think I probably owe a lot of people about a million apologies, but mostly you.”

Ben knows Leslie is tiny, it’s hard not to notice that, but he’s never really thought of her as a small person. Her personality usually takes up so much space. Now, though, she’s sitting cross-legged on the bleachers, her shoulders slumped, and she seems…well, tiny. Diminished. Like everything in the world is just _wrong_ and she thinks it’s all her fault.

God, does he know what that feels like. And he really doesn’t want her to feel that way.

“Well,” he says, slowly, “I, um…”

Shit.

He takes a bite of the cheeseburger, like that’s a legitimate response. It is cold, but he can’t taste anything anyway, so the temperature doesn’t really matter.

“Yeah, okay,” Leslie mutters, in a very small voice, and she unfolds her legs and stands up.

Ben swallows quickly. “Leslie, you…” Dear god, why can’t he use words like a normal person? He takes a deep breath. “Stay. You’re right, we should talk.” She doesn’t climb off the bleachers, but she doesn’t sit down again either. “It’s not just you. I mean, it’s my fault too. I should have told you sooner.”

She plops back down next to him, maybe a little bit closer than before. “When did you figure it out?” she asks.

He sighs, picks a sesame seed off the hamburger bun. “Around the third or fourth day. I—I thought it might be you, so I peeked in your field hockey binder—which I know I shouldn’t have, but you did ask me to look at it, so I looked—and I recognized your handwriting.”

“So why didn’t you say anything?” she asks, sounding hesitant, like she kind of already knows what the answer is going to be. He thinks she might be trying not to cry.

“Because…” He swallows. “Well, because you’d already made it pretty clear that you hated me,” he says, flicking a sesame seed onto the ground.

“No, I hadn’t,” she says, defensively. “Why would you think that?”

“Oh, my god,” says Ben, groaning. “You screamed at me for, like, an hour about the field hockey thing. The first week, you disappeared every single time I showed up anywhere. You’ve argued with every decision I’ve made during all the baseball games, and you obviously don’t even like baseball that much. You hang out in my cabin almost every single night and make it a point to be nice to everyone _except_ me, like I don’t even exist. We’ve had exactly one conversation that didn’t end in you screaming at me. What the hell was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know,” she says, wiping a tear from her eye.

“And the last couple of days, I started to think that maybe I was wrong, but by then it seemed like it was too late to tell you,” he continues. He’d thought that maybe actually saying those things out loud would make him feel better, but it doesn’t. He actually feels worse, if that’s possible.

“Ben,” she says, quietly, “I never hated you. Kind of the opposite, in fact. It was that stupid magazine. I never should have paid attention to it, I just didn’t know how to…” She sniffles a couple of times, sits up straight, and crams what’s left of the napkin back in her pocket. “Never mind. Look, I get it. We can just ignore each other for the rest of the summer.”

But Ben only registered about half of that, especially since the magazine part doesn’t make any sense. Still, he needs to focus on that, and not the stuff that he thought he heard clearly.

“What are you talking about?” he asks. “What magazine?”

Leslie digs into the pocket of her cutoffs and pulls out a glossy, folded piece of paper, battered around the edges, apparently ripped from a magazine. “This article, or whatever it is. It’s from _Seventeen_.” She’s blushing furiously now, which is kind of cute, but no, he’s not allowed to think those things about her, he needs to stop thinking about that...He takes the paper and unfolds it.

“‘The top three things girls do that guys find appealing,’” he reads aloud. “‘Part of the thirty-day plan.’ What the hell is this?”

“Keep going,” she says, sounding a little bit relieved.

He scans down the first page and learns that it’s appealing when a girl forces herself to have the exact same interests that her crush does, and then forces herself to try to do those things with him, even if she hates the things he likes. The words “baseball” and “science fiction” and “project management?” are scrawled in the margin in Leslie’s handwriting, with “baseball” underlined heavily.

He reads further, and learns that girls are supposed to play hard to get by…pretending not to be interested in the guys they’re interested in and openly flirting with other people? Some guy named Craig is quoted as saying that he only ever notices the girls who pay attention to other guys and not him. Here Leslie’s written “Mark—no, Chris—ew, J.R.—never in a million years, Andy—probably wouldn’t notice” next to the paragraph.

The third paragraph has something to do with making boring activities fun, and she’s just scribbled a bunch of question marks next to it.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Ben says, meaning the article itself. He feels like some light might be dawning in regards to other things, and also his heart is starting to beat even faster.

“I know,” she groans. She seems to have composed herself in the time it took him to read all that.

“You’re supposed to pretend to not to like the people you like, and pretend to like the people you don’t?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re supposed to pretend to be interested in things you hate?”

“Yes.”

“And this is supposed to—to make guys like you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she says emphatically, drawing the word out for as long as possible.

He blinks. “That’s really dumb advice.”

“I thought so too!” she exclaims, way more loudly than necessary. “But—but I’d never had a crush on anyone before. Not a real one. And I couldn’t figure out what to do, and I couldn’t admit anything to Ann, not then. So I read this article, and it didn’t make sense to me at all, but I asked Ann about it, and she said it worked.” She pauses, takes a deep breath. “So I tried to do all that stuff to you, and it—well, obviously I didn’t do it right. Or maybe it is just really dumb advice.” She’s blushing again, and that really is all kinds of adorable, and he is not going to be able to stop thinking so. “But that’s—that’s why I’ve been acting so terrible. I thought I had to, to get you to like me.”

There’s a strange buzzing noise in Ben’s ears now, but he can barely hear it over his heartbeat, and in any case, he has absolutely no idea how to respond. Did she just say…no, there’s no way that she just confessed to having had a crush on him this entire time. His pulse is throbbing in really strange places, like in his armpits and at the back of his neck, and he has to swallow hard a couple of times before he can get any words to come out.

“When did you…?” He’s not even sure what he means by that. The words don’t even make sense. It must be an adequate enough response, though, because Leslie starts talking again.

“When I read your third letter,” she says, blushing again. He can’t even remember what was in that letter. “And—and then you sent me that speech, and it was so good, all the things I would have wanted to—and I just…” She drops her eyes a little. “And then of course once I actually met you—I mean, I didn’t know you were _you_ , if you know what I mean, but I—I really hoped you were. So—so I like you, is what I’m trying to say, and I should have just said it in the first place, I guess.”

Okay, now she’s fucking with him. She has to be. “Seriously?” he says, incredulously.

He must have just sounded sarcastic instead of incredulous, because she flinches, hard. “Jeez, Ben, don’t act so surprised,” she snaps, starting to get up again. “I know I screwed everything up, but you don’t have to rub it in.”

Shit. “Leslie, wait,” he says, grabbing her elbow, which is soft and smooth and feels kind of perfect in his hand. “Sorry. I just—I didn’t—I haven’t—” He bites his tongue on purpose, hoping the pain will deliver some sort of clarity. It doesn’t. “I’m not trying to be mean, it’s just—”

“Just _what_?” she asks. He lets go of her elbow, even though he doesn’t really want to.

“It’s just—I’m not used to girls liking me,” he admits, suddenly feeling unusually sweaty.

“Oh.” She sits down again, looking puzzled. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know,” he says, although it seems pretty obvious to him. But what else is he supposed to say? He takes off his glasses and reflexively polishes the lenses with the front of his shirt, trying to think as he stares at the blurry green plaid.

Even though he’s not looking directly at her, he can sense that she’s uncertain, and for the first time, it occurs to him that this—this _liking people_ —is probably just as nerve-wracking and confusing for girls. Why hasn’t he ever thought of that before now? It makes so much _sense_ , now that he’s thought of it.

Suddenly, he realizes (it’s incredibly hard to think clearly when his heartbeat is so loud) that he hasn’t told her—not yet, and he really should—damn it. Ben puts his glasses back on and forces himself to look at her, and…and why hasn’t he been looking at her this whole time? She’s just so _pretty_ , sitting there on the bleachers, with her blonde hair sort of glowing in the light from the rogue lamp, and she _likes_ him, she just said so.

“Well,” he says, cautiously, and oh god it’s hard to get the words out, even though he really wants her to hear them. Is he shaking? He feels like he might be shaking. “I—I like you too.” He’s probably going to throw up in a minute. In fact, he’s almost sure he’s going to throw up.

“Yeah?” A smile spreads across her face, soft and tentative, and he could swear that her hair starts to glow a little more brightly.

“Yeah,” he says, a little sheepishly. “You’re pretty awesome. I mean—I mean, when you’re not—are you still going to yell at me all the time?”

She shakes her head emphatically. “Never. No more yelling.”

He can’t take it anymore. She’s shifted over a little bit more, and her right hand is just _there_ , on the bleachers, and quite frankly Ben feels like he could do pretty much anything right now. The only thing between his hand and hers is the ketchup-free cheeseburger, and clearly he doesn’t need a blockade anymore. He quickly moves the plate to his other side, scoots over a few inches, and takes her hand in his, squeezing softly.

She smiles, shyly, and inches closer to him, until their upper arms and their knees are touching, too.

The early morning running endorphins have _nothing_ on this. Nothing at all. Ben’s heart might explode right out of his chest, any minute now, and that would be okay.

Leslie doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, and he doesn’t either, because really, what would make this better? The sunset is almost over, and he feels incredibly dorky for noticing the sunset, but for once, he doesn’t care about feeling dorky at all. The sky is right at its most spectacular moment, all pink and gold, and everything might be completely perfect, right now.

“This is…nice,” Leslie says eventually, leaning into him a little bit. She sighs. “I’m going to _kill_ Ann for letting me read that stupid magazine. I mean, okay, she didn’t know I liked anyone, so maybe that’s not fair to her, but—”

“She really told you that was good advice?”

“Well, what I said was, ‘Does this actually work?’ and she was like, ‘Yeah, it totally does.’ Although I think I might have taken it a little too far,” says Leslie. “But I shouldn’t have believed her in the first place. I didn’t even think about the fact that _everything_ works for Ann—it doesn’t matter what she does, because she’s so beautiful, you know?”

Ben shakes his head, automatically. “You’re much prettier than Ann is,” he says, and he’s surprised at how easy it is to tell her this, but he probably shouldn’t be, because it’s completely true.

She looks at him for a brief moment, like she’s considering something. Then she nudges him in the ribs and tilts her head a little bit.

He’s about to ask “What?” but thankfully he immediately realizes that this is his cue, that she _wants_ him to do it, and he’d better get right on that before she changes her mind. So he does, and it feels a little strange and tentative and uncertain, but he’s also sure now that he was wrong about how he felt five minutes ago, because it turns out that kissing Leslie is _infinitely_ more amazing than just holding her hand.

And then his brain just kind of turns off, and that’s pretty great too.

Leslie pulls back first. “Ben?” she says, a little breathlessly.

It takes a moment for him to recognize that words exist. “Yeah?”

“I think I want to throw that article in the campfire.”

“We probably should,” he agrees. “Before it harms anyone else.”

She giggles. Oh god, that’s cute. “Although,” she says, squeezing his hand tightly, “everyone else is over there.”

“That’s true.”

“And—and I think I’d rather not see them right now.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, leaning in again, and her lips are back on his. Is he allowed to use tongue? He isn’t sure he knows how to do that, but never mind, Leslie’s already started using hers and he should definitely follow her lead, they’ll just figure this out and oh shit, his braces, but she doesn’t seem to care.

“Okay, that’s awesome,” he says when they finally break apart again.

“It is,” she agrees. “Just, um, just out of curiosity, how many girls have you, um…”

“Honestly?” he says, and he hopes it’s dark enough that she can’t see him blushing. “First time.”

“Huh,” she says. “Well, you’re good at it.”

Obviously the appropriate response is to kiss her again, so he does.

“Are you actually going to eat that cheeseburger?” she asks, eventually.

“Yeah, I probably should,” he says. “I didn’t really have lunch.” He feels a little weird holding a burger when she doesn’t have one, but she makes up for it by eating most of the chips, and wow is this an amazing cheeseburger even though he can somehow barely taste anything.

“Oh, here’s the napkin,” she says, handing him what’s left of it. He shrugs, and wipes his hands on his shorts instead. “Sorry. I was nervous.”

“Leslie, I…” Ben starts, but he really doesn’t have any idea what he’s going to say. “Can we go somewhere else?” These bleachers really are uncomfortable, and more importantly, it’s suddenly very important that he finds out what it feels like to walk around the lake with her.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that walking around the lake with Leslie is kind of awesome too. They veer off of Chris’s jogging path and go down by the water, and Leslie is adorably put out that he’s much better at skipping stones than she is until he points out that he’s from Minnesota and there are ten thousand lakes there, so he’s had a lot of practice.

Leslie drops her last stone on the ground and turns to him. “Do I have to count Mark as my first kiss?” she says, abruptly.

Now there’s something Ben doesn’t want to think about. He winces. “Do we have to talk about Mark?”

“Sorry,” she says, squeezing his hand. “I just—I don’t want him to be it, you know? He wasn’t supposed to be. I want it to be you.”

Yeah, okay, he can’t be mad at her for bringing up Mark. Not if she’s going to say things like that, and not if she’s going to look at him this way.

“Well,” he says, shoving his free hand in his pocket and crossing his fingers, “you didn’t kiss him back, did you?” He really hopes she didn’t.

“God, no.”

“Then I don’t think it counts,” he says, decisively. “I think you have to participate in order for it to count.”

“Good,” she says, and this seems like a good time to experiment with making out while standing up, because they haven’t done that yet.

Tall, Ben thinks, vaguely. This makes him feel tall. Possibly because Leslie is short. That would be the logical reason.

“Maybe—maybe we should slow down,” he suggests, when they break for air.

“I guess so,” she says, reluctantly, glancing at her watch. “It is getting pretty late.”

They walk back to the cabins, and it’s so late that the party in cabin six is already over.

“So,” she says, as they approach her door. “We’ll continue this tomorrow, right?”

“Absolutely,” Ben says, and okay he does need to kiss her one more time, even if pretty much anyone could see them right now.

“Where the hell have you been all night?” demands Darwish when Ben finally returns to cabin six. “You missed the most awesome party yet. Andy scored an entire case of Fun Dip. Massive sugar rush up in here.”

“Just around,” he says, pulling out his toothbrush.

“And why are you grinning like an idiot?”

Is he? Well, whatever. “No reason.”

“Nerd,” Darwish mutters.

Ben really doesn’t care.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

“Ann!” Leslie whispers. Okay, it’s sort of a loud, screeching whisper. She’s perched halfway up the ladder on their bunk and she’s poking Ann in the ribs, and she feels a little bit bad about waking Ann up but there is no possible way she could go to bed right now and she really, really needs to talk about this. “Ann, wake up. I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” yawns Ann, blinking slowly. “Leslie, what time is it? Where have you been?”

“Come on, come on, come on,” Leslie whispers, frantically. She’s trying really hard to keep herself from jumping up and down on the ladder, but it isn’t working, and their whole bed is shaking.

“Okay, just give me a minute,” Ann whispers back. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Everything is awesome. That’s why I need to tell you about it right now, all of it.”

Ann rubs her eyes a couple of times. “How many s’mores did you eat tonight, Leslie?”

“None. Why?” She hops down from the ladder so that Ann can climb down, more sedately, and hands Ann her shoes.

“No s’mores and no Fun Dip?” asks Ann.

“Fun Dip? Nope. I haven’t had any sugar at all.” What does Fun Dip have to do with anything? Leslie’s still bouncing, a little bit, as they sneak off to the bathroom, since that’s the safest place to be discovered in the event that Tammy suddenly decides to care about the bedtime rule.

“Wait a minute,” says Ann, slowly, as she checks to make sure that the bench by the showers is dry and safe to sit on. “Ben wasn’t around all night either. Did something happen?”

“Yes!” Leslie squeals, and she tells Ann _everything_ , finally, and that is _such_ a relief, not to be keeping secrets from Ann anymore.

“That’s insane,” Ann says, ten minutes later. “All of that is insane, Leslie.”

“No, it’s not. It’s awesome.”

“It’s awesome too, but it’s nuts,” says Ann. “I can’t believe you lied to me about the pen pal stuff. I can’t believe you guys were making out on the bleachers all night. I can’t believe you went to _Ron_ for dating advice.”

“Well, I was embarrassed about it, and besides I spent like the last six months trying to get Lindsay not to like boys,” Leslie says. “I didn’t want anyone to think I was a hypocrite.”

Ann groans a little, but she’s smiling. “Only you would worry about that. You know that, right?”

Leslie thinks maybe more people should worry about that, but she’s in way too good of a mood to argue. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now,” she says. “Everything worked out. I think Ben is going to be an _awesome_ boyfriend.” She pauses, thinking over how those words sound together. “Wait, is he my boyfriend? Do I have a boyfriend now?”

Ann groans again. “Don’t you think you should ask him that?”

“Yeah, probably,” Leslie agrees, and she automatically looks in the direction of cabin six, even though there are at least two solid walls between her and Ben right now. “Do you think he’s still awake?”

“Leslie, we’re not breaking into the boys’ cabin right now. It’s almost one in the morning,” says Ann, stifling a yawn. “You know I’m totally excited and happy for you, but I want to go back to bed.”

“Okay, okay,” says Leslie. She’s definitely too excited to sleep, though.

“And if he isn’t an awesome boyfriend, he’ll have to answer to me,” Ann proclaims in a dramatic whisper as they sneak back into cabin seven.

Leslie does manage to fall asleep eventually, although it takes a while, and she must have been more tired than she thought, because she doesn’t wake up until nearly 7:15. When she does finally get out of bed, she discovers that Ann isn’t kidding about holding Ben accountable. Apparently there’s going to be a series of tests or something?

“That sounds like something I would do to your boyfriend,” she says, nervously, tying her shoes.

“Leslie, a double date is not a series of tests. It’s just you and Ben hanging out with me and Chris.”

“But what if we’re not good at it?”

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. You already know you like each other. You hang out with me and Chris all the time.”

“Yeah, but it might be different now,” Leslie points out. “And what am I supposed to wear, Ann? I didn’t bring any nice clothes to camp.”

“Leslie,” says Ann, rolling her eyes. “Stop thinking so hard about this.”

Ben is just coming back from the showers when Leslie pops out of her cabin a few minutes later. He waves at her, a little nervously, like he isn’t sure exactly where they stand right now. She suddenly feels a few butterflies, too. Is this going to be weird, now that they’ve said all those things and made out? She hopes it isn’t weird. God, he’s cute.

“So we’re going on a double date with Ann and Chris tonight,” she informs him without preamble. “I mean, if we’re still—”

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, of course—I mean, if you still want to—”

“Of course I do,” she says, quickly.

“Okay, great,” Ben says, sounding relieved, and they both just stand there for a minute, kind of smiling at each other.

“Um, breakfast?” Leslie suggests.

“Yeah, all right,” Ben agrees. He holds up his wet towel. “Let me put this stuff back in the cabin.”

“I’ll be here,” she says, cheerfully, and she still feels surprisingly cheerful even when Lindsay stomps by and deliberately acts like Leslie isn’t there.

“Um,” Ben says, emerging from the cabin. “So—so everything is still…”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Leslie, nudging him in the ribs. “Jeez, do I have to say everything over again?”

“No. I just wanted to make sure before I, you know…I mean, I haven’t said anything to anyone yet.” He glances around. “Sorry. How, exactly, are we going on a double date? Like, where are we supposed to go?”

“I haven’t figured that out either. It was Ann’s idea.”

“So you told Ann, obviously.”

“I couldn’t _not_ tell Ann,” Leslie says. “I was too excited.” He looks kind of pleased, she thinks.

They start walking up to the mess hall, and she grabs Ben’s hand because—well, because she wants to, and it feels exactly as good as it did last night. Then he smiles at her, and grips her hand tightly, and that feels even better.

“Morning,” says Ron, carrying a giant box of papers out of the rec building. Leslie feels Ben drop—well, he doesn’t drop her hand so much as he flings it violently away.

“Sorry,” Ben whispers in her ear. “Reflex.”

“It’s okay,” she mutters. She can kind of understand how Ron might come off as intimidating.

“So,” says Ron, eyeing the two of them.

“Um, what’s in the box?” Leslie asks.

“Those things Jerry made you all fill out,” says Ron. “He forgot to throw them away.”

“You didn’t read them, did you?” she asks, nervously.

“Leslie, you know how much I hate paperwork, and how little I care about your personal lives,” Ron says. It’s true, she does. “No one should read these. I’m grilling some sausage for breakfast. Thought the contents of this box might go well with the charcoal briquettes.”

He strolls off, whistling tunelessly.

“I feel better about those now,” Ben remarks, and he takes her hand again.

 _And_ this morning is waffle morning. They’re crappy store brand frozen waffles, and there isn’t any whipped cream, but still. So really, today is like the best day ever. Ben comes to the talent show rehearsals (after he runs down to the field to find his book; apparently he forgot it in the bleachers last night) and sort of hints that he might have a solution to one of her problems, which is exciting even if he hasn’t said which problem he might be able to solve and she’s not even sure they have any real problems.

April keeps looking back and forth between them, and Ben keeps looking nervously at April and Jess, and he stays a good twenty feet away from Leslie for most of the morning, but that’s okay, she understands why. The instant everyone else clears out, around 11:00, he’s back by her side, helping her tidy up the props, and she thinks he might be thinking about kissing her when the door opens and—

“See? I told you there was something going on!” yells Andy, triumphantly.

“Dude, no way. No freaking way,” says Darwish.

J.R. just giggles. It’s very high-pitched.

“What are you doing?” snaps Leslie.

“Nothing,” says Andy, in a sing-song voice, and he actually looks up at the ceiling and whistles, like that’s going to convince them he’s totally innocent.

“What are _we_ doing?” asks J.R. “What are _you_ doing?”

“I can’t believe this,” says Darwish. “Seriously, I cannot believe this.”

“What exactly do you think _this_ is?” asks Ben, gesturing vaguely at the props. Leslie thinks he’s trying to play it cool, but he’s not very good at that. He must have been doing something to his hair while she wasn’t looking, because it’s suddenly standing straight up.

“Nerds!” yells Darwish, and J.R. giggles some more.

“And why wouldn’t you believe it?” asks Leslie. “Er, whatever you think it is, I mean.”

Darwish gives an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, Andy, you’re right. I owe you my pudding pop. They’re totally doing it.”

“We are _not_ doing _it_ ,” says Ben, at the same time Leslie yells “Ew, no, we aren’t!”

“Well, not _it_ , but _something_ ,” says Darwish. “Are you both seriously going to deny that you’ve been making out all morning?”

“Yes,” says Ben. “You were _with us_ all morning.”

“But,” says Andy, pointing his guitar at them, “you two are together now, right?”

“Well,” says Ben, glancing at Leslie. She nods once. “Yeah.”

“Dude, I called it,” Andy announces, to no one in particular.

“Nerds!” yells Darwish.

And then he spends the next hour mocking them relentlessly. He even goes so far as to stand outside the girls’ bathroom and shout over the walls while Leslie tries to pee. By the time lunch rolls around, she’s already lost count of the number of times she’s heard the word “nerds,” but she suspects the total is over two hundred by now.

“I probably should have predicted this part,” Ben mutters, poking at his sandwich with a potato chip. He’s been getting the worst of it, of course. “At least Jess isn’t around to hear it.”

“You’re not taking him seriously, are you?” she asks. If Darwish ruins this, she’s going to _kill_ him.

“No. How could anyone possibly take him seriously?” Ben says. “Besides,” he adds, thoughtfully, “I’m not exactly upset about why he’s making fun of me.”

Leslie has to fight very hard not to start making out with him right then and there, in the middle of the mess hall. She settles for swatting him on the arm instead.

“Seriously, though, man,” says Darwish, plopping down across from them. “Leslie dumped Brendanawicz within five minutes, and you two have been going on all morning.”

“No, we started last night,” Ben says, nonchalantly.

Darwish glances at Leslie for confirmation, and when she nods, he gives an exaggerated double-take and slams his Coke onto the table, spraying all three of them with foam.

“Dude,” he says, staring at Ben with his eyes wide. “How have _you_ lasted longer as her boyfriend than Mark did?”

Ben shrugs and looks at Leslie. She shrugs too.

“Not much of a contest,” she says, and Ben smiles at her.

“You’re both nerds,” Darwish groans, before he _finally_ runs off to join J.R., and leaves them alone.

“He really needs a better insult,” Leslie remarks.

“Um,” says Ben. “Did you want to—are we using that word? Not nerds, the other one."

“I don’t know,” Leslie says, feeling the butterflies again. But they’re nice butterflies. “Do you want to?”

He looks at her like she’s crazy. “Yeah, of course I do. But, I mean, if you don’t, that’s okay—we can wait—”

“Um, I kind of already said it to Ann last night,” she confesses, trying not to blush.

“Well,” Ben says, after a moment’s hesitation, “if you’re going to be my girlfriend, then I think at some point, you and I should probably make out with each other.”

That, Leslie thinks, is a very good idea. “Art supply closet,” she murmurs automatically.

“What?”

“The art supply closet at the back of the rec building. There’s a padlock on the door, though. I just have to get the keys from Jerry.”

“Okay,” says Ben. “Or we could, you know, find somewhere that isn’t locked.”

Leslie shakes her head. “I can get us in.”

It’s not that hard to convince Jerry to give her the keys, under the ruse that she wants to plan an arts and crafts activity for the younger kids that isn’t plastic lanyards.

“Actually, this is a pretty good idea,” Ben says, looking around as Leslie closes the door. “It’s kind of cramped, but there’s not much chance of anyone walking in, is there?”

“Well, there isn’t a lock on this side,” she says, carefully setting the padlock and keys on a pile of plastic lanyard laces. Now that they’re completely alone, she’s getting nervous and jittery again. “But at least the door shuts. And it has some natural light.”

“Yes, the window is an advantage,” Ben agrees, picking up a roll of sculpture wire and putting it down again, “especially since it looks like it might be hard to see in here from outside, with that tree in the way.”

“Also,” says Leslie, “while it is a tiny bit cramped, I don’t really think the, um, planned activity requires all that much space. I’ve been thinking for a while now that this would be preferable to a lot of other spots around the campgrounds.”

“How long is a while?” he asks. “Like, since last night, or—”

She tries to remember. “Before I left for camp, I think. I didn’t want to be unprepared, you know, just in case—why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re kind of amazing, you know that?” he says. Leslie feels herself flush, a little, and the nice butterflies start going crazy.

“So, uh, why aren’t we making out already?” she asks.

“Good question,” he says.

It really is amazing, Leslie thinks, how much better this feels with Ben than with Mark. His lips aren’t gross and rubbery and wet, and his arms are around her but he isn’t holding her in place at all, and his breath doesn’t smell like corn chips. But most importantly, every time they’ve kissed so far she’s felt one hundred percent certain that if she tried to stop or pull away, he would let her do it without hesitation.

She draws back slightly, just to test her theory. Ben immediately straightens up and removes his hands from around her waist.

“Sorry. Is everything okay?” he asks, sounding concerned, and she feels herself melt a little bit.

“Fantastic,” she says, and now she feels a little reckless, so she throws her arms around his neck.

“But you’d tell me if it wasn’t, right?” he asks, hesitantly replacing his hands. “I don’t want you to think that—”

Yeah, she is _so_ not going to let him get any more words out.

Fifteen minutes or so later (she lost her sense of time at some point), Leslie is still congratulating herself on her excellent taste in boyfriends when the closet door is thrown open, violently. They don’t even have time to pretend they aren’t doing anything.

“Gross,” says April, snapping her gum.

“See, I told you Darwish was right,” says Shauna.

“I’m telling Mom,” says Jess, giggling, and then they slam the door and run away.

When Leslie turns back to Ben, his hair is sticking up all crazy again. “I probably should have predicted that too,” he says, groaning.

“Well, you know no one can keep a secret around here,” she says, straightening her t-shirt. “Now where were we?”

“Deciding on a craft project, I think.” He picks up the sculpture wire again, and starts looking around the rest of the closet. “Um, I actually do have an idea.”

“Okay,” Leslie says, and it is okay, although she was kind of hoping they might go back to making out. But ideas are always exciting.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, abruptly.

That seems like a dumb question at this point. “Yeah, of course,” she says.

“I mean with craft projects.”

“Yes?” She’s very confused now. How do you not trust someone with craft projects?

She must look really bewildered, because Ben’s chuckling at her now. “Look, I just want to make sure I can pull this off before I tell you what it is, okay?” And he starts assembling a really random pile of stuff—the sculpture wire, a bucket, some brightly colored tissue paper…

“What are you doing?” she asks. “I want to know what you’re doing, Ben.”

“You’ll see, if it works,” he says. “If not, I’m going to throw it out and pretend it never happened.”

“Can I help?” she asks.

“Could you get a broom, one with a wooden handle, and some flashlights? Preferably old ones. They need to work, though. Oh, and Jess and Shauna and April, I guess. And some water.” And he hands her the bucket.

Okay, she really has no idea what’s going on here, although Jess seems to be reasonably clued in once Leslie finds her and repeats the list of items she’s supposed to be collecting.

“I’m sorry my brother’s so lame,” she says, rolling her eyes. “He needs serious help. Did he tell you to get a hair dryer?”

“No,” says Leslie. That’s even more confusing.

“You should probably get a hair dryer,” says Jess. “And maybe a cooler boyfriend.” So Leslie goes to find a hair dryer while the girls run off with the broom and flashlights.

April won’t let her in the rec building when she returns with Ann’s hair dryer. “Sorry,” she says. “Ben says this thing is so lame that you’d break up with him if you knew what it was, so we have to destroy it. Can you get us Ron’s lighter fluid?”

“I did _not_ say that,” groans Ben from somewhere behind the door. “It’s just not ready yet. Don’t get any lighter fluid.”

“Are you sure I can’t help?” Leslie asks.

“No,” says April. “Go away.”

The four of them stay locked in the rec building all afternoon. Leslie hangs out around outside for a while, trying to listen in, but eventually Jess sticks her head outside and tells Leslie it’ll be hours and she really should go away. So Leslie finds Ann, and they spend the rest of the afternoon at the lake.

Chris shows up, fresh from jogging as usual, and strips off everything but his shorts. “Leslie Knope,” he says, pointing at her, “Ann Perkins told me the excellent news this morning, and I literally could not be happier for you. Or for Ben.”

“Um, thanks,” says Leslie. Chris really does look like he’s about to shed tears of joy.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of trying to set you two up,” he says. “But now that I think about it, I believe you have _very_ compatible qualities.”

“Okay,” says Leslie. She really can’t think of any other way to react to Chris, most of the time.

Ann rolls her eyes and gets up from her beach towel. “Come on, leave Leslie alone,” she says. “You can say all this later tonight, when we have our double date.”

“Where exactly are we supposed to be going?” asks Chris, as Ann drags him into the water.

Ben, Jess, Shauna, and April don’t reappear until dinner, and they’re all covered in glue and tiny bits of tissue paper.

“When can I see what you’ve been doing?” Leslie pleads.

Ben looks at Jess, who shrugs. “They should be dry enough after dinner,” she says.

“That means in half an hour,” Ben says, “not right after you’ve eaten as fast as you possibly can, Leslie.”

She’s half annoyed that she has to wait that long, still, and half thrilled that Ben already knows her so well.

Dinner takes a _painfully_ long time.

When she does finally get to see the mysterious arts and crafts project, it turns out not to be lame at all. Shauna turns the lights on with a little flourish, and Leslie looks over to the folding table to see four long, multicolored…

“Papier-mache light sabers,” announces Jess, rolling her eyes.

And they are. They’ve made armatures out of the sculpture wire (molded on the broom handle, she thinks) and attached them to the flashlights, which are clearly handles, and they’ve made papier-mache blades out of the colored tissue paper and a bunch of Elmer’s glue.

“They really are kind of lame, I know,” Ben says, shrugging apologetically, “and we could only make four, and they’ll probably fall apart pretty easily, but if you still wanted to do that Imperial Death March thing…”

“They sort of work,” says April, picking one up. She pushes the button on the flashlight, and the blade lights up a little bit.

“Don’t wave it!” yells Jess. “It’s not dry enough yet.”

“I wasn’t going to wave it,” says April.

“So, um,” says Ben, hesitantly.

“These,” Leslie breathes, “are _awesome_.” She can’t resist giving him a gigantic hug, even if they are right in front of his sister. “I can’t believe you remembered I wanted to do a _Star Wars_ thing with light sabers.”

“Well,” he says, turning pink, “yeah, of course I remembered that.”

“How did you know how to make them?” she asks, picking up a blue one. They’re definitely not perfect, it’s pretty easy to see the wire through the tissue paper, but that doesn’t matter, not at all.

“Um,” he says. “I might have been Luke Skywalker for Halloween...more than once. This is actually something my mom figured out.”

“So,” Leslie says, cautiously waving the blue light saber, “any chance I can convince you to be in the dance, Mr. Skywalker?”

“Nope,” Ben says, instantly. “No way. I have limits.”

“Well, that’s kind of lame.” She puts the light saber back on the table.

“Leslie,” he mutters softly, into her ear, “in case you haven’t noticed, and I somehow think that maybe you haven’t, _I’m_ kind of lame.”

“Nah,” she says, gripping his arm. “You’re definitely not lame. Maybe a little dorky, but, you know...” She glances around. They need an excuse to get rid of the little kids. “Well, I should probably return Ann’s hair dryer,” she says, brightly, and she raises her eyebrows at Ben.

“Yes,” he agrees. “I will help you do that.” He grabs the hair dryer off the table, and they head out the door.

Jess rolls her eyes. “I know what you’re up to,” she calls after them. “I’m telling Mom!”

“You already threatened that,” Ben calls back.

It takes them half an hour to get the hair dryer all the way back to the cabin, and another twenty minutes to make it back up to the campfire.

“So,” says Ann, when they finally arrive for s’mores. “Everything okay?” Her eyebrows are raised, slightly.

“Great,” says Leslie, reaching for the marshmallows.

“You guys are _still_ together?” yells Darwish, appearing out of nowhere. “Nerds!”

Ann’s big plans for their double date that night basically boil down to the four of them sharing a couch during Jerry’s scheduled movie. It’s not the biggest couch in the world, so Leslie is mostly sitting on Ben’s lap.

“Are you sure you’re comfortable?” she asks him, for probably the third or fourth time. She is definitely totally comfortable, but she just wants to make sure…

“I’m fine,” he assures her. “You really don’t weigh anything.”

“Tonight’s movie is,” says Jerry, excitedly, “wait for it— _Meatballs_.” He punches play on the VCR.

“Do you seriously not know that other movies exist, Jerry?” yells Darwish from the front of the room, as everyone else groans. Half the kids get up and leave.

“Sorry, guys,” says Ann. Then she peers closely at Leslie and lowers her voice. “Is that a _hickey_ on your neck?” She sounds highly amused.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leslie says, quickly, but she can feel her face burning, and Ben definitely stiffens a little bit beneath her. She quickly pulls her hair out of its braid and fluffs it, so that more of her neck is covered.

“That’s what I thought,” says Ann, smirking.

“Shut up, Ann.”

***

“Jess says you have news,” says his mother, on their scheduled bi-weekly phone call.

“Um,” he says. “What news is she saying I have?” Jess has already run out of the rec building. At least now he knows why she was giggling so hard when she handed him the phone.

“Something about a girl.”

“ _What_ thing about a girl?”

He hears a sigh. “So you’re _not_ going to tell me?”

“I don’t know what it is that I’m not telling you,” he says, wondering how long he’s going to be able to keep this up.

“Are you,” says his mother, “let’s see, how did Jessica put it—are you or are you not cavorting around summer camp with a singing mermaid princess?”

“Jess used the word ‘cavorting’?”

“She did. I was surprised too. Is this your pen pal?”

“Yes,” says Ben, slowly. “And I think Leslie would resent being called a singing mermaid princess.”

He can hear his mother shifting the phone around. “He’s not denying it,” she calls, away from the receiver, and then he hears his father yell something in the background. “Dad wants to know if she’s pretty.”

“Yes,” Ben says. “She is.”

“And she’s nice?”

“Yes.”

“And intelligent, I hope?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he says. “Good lord, Mom.”

“Just checking,” she says. “Most kids your age have terrible taste, you know.”

“Well, I don’t,” he says, firmly, hoping this will get her to drop it, already.

“No, I wouldn’t expect you to,” she says. “Take pictures of her, okay? With you in them. And don’t do anything you shouldn’t.”

“Okay.” He has no idea what his mother thinks he should or shouldn’t be doing, and he doesn’t really want to know, either.

“We miss you.” she says. “Love you. Bye.”

“Miss you too,” Ben says (even though he doesn’t, not that much). And she hangs up before he can remind her that he doesn’t own a camera.

A couple of days later, Jess throws an opened package on the table in front of him during breakfast. “Mail,” she announces.

“You opened my mail?”

“It’s addressed to me too,” she says, rolling her eyes at him. “I took my stuff out. That’s yours.”

There are only two things left in the package: two packets of developed photos, crammed into a single photo lab envelope, and a short note in his mother’s handwriting – “Hope these don’t make you too homesick.”

He doesn’t even want to _think_ about Partridge.

“I hate that they do this,” Ben says. The photos have those tab things glued to the top and they’re rubber-banded into a tiny album. “I wish they’d just put them in a holder thing.”

“You have an opinion about how photos come back from the store?” asks Andy. “Wow, that’s crazy. I never even notice that stuff.”

“No, I agree,” says Leslie. “If they’re already in an album, it takes the fun out of assembling your own albums.”

“Weird,” says Andy. “I’m gonna get more juice. You guys want anything?”

“No, thanks,” says Leslie, and Ben shakes his head. He’s learned the hard way that sometimes Andy thinks “juice” means “all the juices mixed together,” and sometimes Andy thinks “juice” means “all the juices mixed together with chocolate milk.”

“The main reason I don’t like when they do this,” says Ben, stuffing the mini-album back in its envelope, “is because it’s harder to get rid of the photos that didn’t come out.”

Darwish walks by as he’s saying it, and Ben and Leslie both automatically mouth “Nerds!” just as the word comes out of Darwish’s mouth.

“It probably doesn’t help our case when we do that,” Ben whispers to her, and she giggles.

“Probably not,” she says. “Okay, I want to see the pictures.”

He was afraid of that. “You aren’t going to let me take out the bad ones first?”

“Nope,” she says, cheerfully.

“I don’t even know what these are from,” Ben says. “They might be really boring.” He has some suspicions, though, and he’d kind of rather confirm them in private. But in the week or so they’ve been together, he’s figured out a few things about Leslie, and one of them is that resistance is usually futile. Okay, to be honest, he had that one figured out well before they’d started making out all the time.

Thank god one of the other things he’s figured out is that she really does like him a lot (he is still constantly amazed by this), and she probably isn’t going to dump him even if his mother did decide to make duplicates of his naked baby photos and mail them to camp. Or, he hopes, if his mother sent the _other_ pictures he hopes she didn’t send.

His mother didn’t send the naked baby pictures, thank goodness. The first album starts with pictures of his bedroom, mid-destruction. Well, those aren’t so bad, even if his mother is trying to be funny again. In one of the photos, she’s posing in her old plaid bathrobe, aiming a sledgehammer at his _Return of the Jedi_ poster. There are also a couple of pictures of the half-destroyed kitchen, and the living room, and one of all their furniture piled up in the garage, with his dad looking puzzled, trying to decide where on the pile he should put the last table lamp. Leslie starts laughing when they get to that one.

“What’s so funny?” Ben asks, because it really is just all the furniture piled up in the garage. His dad isn’t _that_ weird looking.

“Nothing,” she says, calming herself. “Just—I understand your shirts now.”

“What’s wrong with my shirts?”

“Nothing,” she says again. “Your shirts are cute. It’s just…they’re almost all plaid, and so is your dad’s shirt, and that lampshade, and your bedspread is plaid, and your mom’s bathrobe is plaid, and your sofa is plaid, and—” She flips back to the kitchen. “Even your kitchen wallpaper is plaid.”

Huh. She’s right. “Well,” he says, “it’ll all be different when I get home. Except the sofa, I guess.” Their Christmas tree skirt is plaid too, he remembers, and the trim on the nice bath towels, and at least three of the dining room tablecloths, but he probably doesn’t need to tell her any of those things.

Leslie flips to the next picture, and clearly some progress has been made, because it’s his bedroom, all put back together again. And she starts laughing again.

“Your new curtains are plaid,” she chokes out, in between giggles.

“Okay, okay,” Ben mutters, but even he has to laugh a little bit at that one, especially since he’d completely forgotten that he was even getting new curtains in the first place, let alone plaid ones. They both start laughing even harder when they look across the mess hall at the same time and realize that Jess is wearing plaid shorts today.

“It’s like a disease,” says Leslie, gasping.

“So I should probably try for more stripes, or something,” Ben says. He supposes he ought to start paying more attention to clothes anyway, although that prospect sounds really boring.

“No, you look good in plaid,” she says, and she blushes a little bit. Leslie usually blushes a little bit when she compliments him—that’s another one of the things he’s learned about her—and he really does find that irresistibly cute. For a moment, he wishes they didn’t both believe so strongly in not making out in front of everyone.

“Well, we should go,” he says. Today Chris has promised (well, threatened is probably a more accurate word) to teach them all how to play Ultimate Frisbee, which he’d been reading about in one of the men’s fitness magazines that his parents keep forwarding him.

“Oh, no,” Leslie says, and damn it, she’s got the determined look on her face. “I want to see the other album.”

Ben sighs. “Okay, fine,” he says. “I think these are going to be the embarrassing ones. I hope you’re happy about that.”

He’s right, of course. This is the roll of film that starts with graduation photos and ends with—he flips to the back of the album quickly—oh god his father _did_ bring the camera to the dance without Ben noticing at the time.

He’s going to _kill_ his parents.

“Ooh,” says Leslie, grabbing the album from him and opening it to the first photo, which is a lineup of the entire graduating class. “Is this your graduation?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“I don’t see you.”

“We’re lined up alphabetically. I’m second from last.”

“Well, that’s boring,” she says. “Where are the ones from your speech?”

“Yeah, let’s not look too closely at those,” he mutters.

Leslie gives him a quick shove. “Stop acting embarrassed,” she says. “Everyone looks awesome in graduation hats.”

Ben’s pretty sure that actually, the opposite is true and no one looks good in graduation hats, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, now you have to tell me who all these people are,” she says.

“Well, that’s me—”

“I knew that,” she says, and she punches him on the arm.

“That’s the principal and vice principal. That’s the gym teacher—I have no idea why she’s on stage. That’s Steve, he’s kind of my best friend—”

“Kind of?” Leslie asks.

“Well, he got a girlfriend and then he got all weird,” Ben says, although from his current perspective, it doesn’t really seem like Steve _was_ acting all that weird. He might need to talk to Steve when he gets home. “And that’s Cindy. She’s the class president.”

Leslie flips to the next pictures, and sure enough, those are the ones that Ben hoped no one would ever see. To his immense surprise, though, they really aren’t all that awful.

“She’s really pretty,” says Leslie, matter-of-factly, in the same way that she calls Ann pretty.

Maybe it’s hearing that particular tone in Leslie’s voice that flips a switch in Ben’s head, but suddenly he feels like Cindy is pretty in the same way that he thinks Ann is pretty—like it’s an objective, isolated fact, not some all-encompassing magnetic suction tornado force that has the power to make him act like an idiot. Okay, maybe he still feels a tiny twinge when he looks at Cindy, but that’s all it is, and it feels kind of residual, like a scab that’s going to fall off any minute now.

Wow, that is _such_ a relief. And kind of a gross metaphor. Metaphor? No, simile. He definitely should not compare girls to scabs out loud, ever.

“Yeah, she’s Steve’s girlfriend,” he says.

“Oh,” Leslie says, and then she thinks for a moment. “Were they the ones you kept walking in on in the library?”

“I told you about that?”

“Sort of. Do you want to read all your letters again?”

“No,” Ben says. He wants to go make out with Leslie, is what he wants to do right now.

“Okay, and who is _this_?” she asks, flipping through the next few photos. They’ve moved on to the dance now.

Ben groans. “That’s Katie.”

“She’s pretty too,” says Leslie. “But you look miserable.”

“I think I was just trying not to step on her feet.” She’s right, though, he does look kind of miserable. “It’s not like I really wanted to even be there in the first place. Cindy made me dance with her.”

Leslie flips through the rest of the photos. She looks faintly amused. “She’s totally into you,” she says, “and you didn’t even notice, did you?”

Ben cringes. “You can tell that?”

“Well, yeah,” she says. “It’s super obvious.”

“I figured it out,” he mutters, “about four days later.”

“Ron was right,” Leslie says, sighing. “Teenage boys _are_ complete idiots.”

“Wait, you talked to Ron about—”

“Come on,” Leslie says, popping up from the table and grabbing Ben by the wrist. “We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s go make out somewhere before Chris starts throwing Frisbees at our heads.”

How on earth, Ben wonders, did he manage to get such an awesome girlfriend?

He doesn’t want to think about other things that the pictures bring to mind, like the fact that oh yeah, he does actually live in Minnesota and that Minnesota is really, really far away from his awesome girlfriend. But every once in a while, those thoughts creep in anyway, usually when he’s trying to get back to sleep after one of Chris’s bathroom trips. Somehow the realization that his time at summer camp is so limited makes that time seem to go by faster, or maybe it’s just true that time flies when you’re having fun. (Because honestly, making out with Leslie is really, really fun. Actually, just being around her doing whatever has been really fun since she stopped yelling at him, and he is perfectly happy to just be around her doing whatever, but making out is by far the most fun thing that they do.)

“Oh, by the way,” Leslie says one evening, in a huge colossal rush, “mymotheriscomingonvisitingdayonSaturdayandweprobablyneedtodevelopastrategybecauseIhaven’ttoldheraboutyouandshedoesn’tthinkIshouldbedatingyetandshecanbereallyscary.”

“What?” Ben asks, shaking his head a little. He feels like he has water in his ears.

“I’m sorry! I know I should have told her, but—”

“No, I actually didn’t understand what you said.” She repeats it more slowly, which makes him wish he hadn’t asked.

“She actually isn’t overreacting,” says Ann, when Ben stops her the next morning to ask if an emergency task force to discuss meeting Leslie’s mom is really necessary. “You do not want to be on Mrs. Griggs-Knope’s bad side.”

But before the task force begins convening, Leslie gets an idea for a large-scale, camp-wide project, and—well, that might actually be the most fun of all.

Well, besides making out.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

Right after Ann assures Ben that yes, a task force is necessary (he still isn’t convinced), storm clouds roll over camp. Lightning starts, Jerry insists they all stay inside, and in the end nearly everyone gets corralled into the rec building. It only takes an hour for everyone to start getting really bored. Tammy’s taken up her usual post in the reading room, and Lindsay and Donna are the only ones brave enough to go over and grab books.

“We could make more light sabers,” Leslie suggests. She’s been glancing at Lindsay on and off all morning. Ben thinks she’s trying to figure out a way to make up with Lindsay, still. Today might be a particularly bad day to do that, since Lindsay seems to enjoy making scenes in front of people.

“Isn’t it too humid for the papier-mâché to dry?” he asks. He’s pretty sure it is.

“Crap. I think you’re right.”

Jerry opens the art supply closet, but no one really wants to make more plastic lanyards. April folds herself a tiny hat out of construction paper, ties it to her head with a plastic lanyard lace, and walks around talking in that weird voice for the rest of the morning.

Leslie suggests a board game tournament, but half the Monopoly money is missing, _all_ of the checkers are missing, and Orin apparently strung all the little plastic weapons from Clue onto a plastic lanyard last week.

“We don’t actually need the weapons to play Clue, you know,” Ben points out, but Leslie won’t hear of it.

“Yes, we do,” she insists. “It’s no fun if you can’t pretend to stab the pawns with the knife.”

No one wants to play charades, either.

“Did you want to task force now?” asks Ann, sort of half-heartedly.

“No,” Leslie replies, moping. “All my binders are in the cabin. I need them.”

Chris tries to start an aerobics class, but he doesn’t have any music and no one is bored enough to jump around in the middle of the room with him, not even Ann. Eventually he gives up.

“Cabin fever,” says Ann, knowingly. She’s braided and re-braided Leslie’s hair fourteen times now, in various styles (Ben’s so bored that he’s keeping count). “This is the time of year where everyone gets sick of being at camp anyway.”

After a boring lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, Jerry puts on _Meatballs_ , and no one even bothers to complain. They all squish back onto the sofa, or around it. Ben’s aware that he’s watching a movie, but he isn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to what’s going on—not that he needs to, since this is the third time he’s seen _Meatballs_ in five weeks.

Jerry, sitting in a folding chair off to the side of the room, falls asleep halfway through the movie. Ben is somehow not surprised at how loudly Jerry is capable of snoring. He watches April and Orin poke Jerry with a broom handle, cover him with stickers, throw paper airplanes at him, dip his hand in a bucket of water...

Ron finally puts a stop to their fun when Orin approaches with a pair of scissors, and Ben reluctantly returns his partial attention to the television.

“You know what I wish?” says Andy, to no one in particular. “I wish we had a rival camp across the lake.”

“Why?” Ben asks.

“Because, duh,” Andy says. “Then we could have an Olympiad. Fight for our honor.” He punches the air a couple of times.

“ _And_ there would be a wider range of girls,” adds Darwish. “The rival camp would be full of hot ones, if we were the scrappy underdogs and they were the rich kids.”

“I think we should be the rich kids,” says J.R. “Why would we want to be the underdogs?”

“Because,” says Darwish, swatting J.R. on the top of his head (and subsequently deflating his hair), “the scrappy underdogs always win in the end, and they end up with the hot girls! Have you not seen this movie a dozen times like the rest of us?”

“Have _you_ not seen the movie?” shouts J.R. “That’s the whole point of the motivational speech, that the girls wind up with the rich guys no matter who wins!”

And suddenly, Leslie gets an idea. Ben can actually feel her getting an idea. She stiffens slightly, and sits up straight, and clutches at the nearest thing to clutch which, unfortunately, is his knee.

“That’s it,” she says, breathlessly.

“Leslie,” says Ben, wincing, “could you, um…fingernails.”

“What? Oh, crap. I’m sorry.” She lets go. “But that’s it. That’s what we should do.”

“Start a rival camp across the lake full of rich kids so that we can have a contest against them?” says Andy. “But the rich kids already have a camp, Leslie. They all go to that tennis camp in Eagleton.”

“We don’t need a rival camp to have an Olympiad,” says Leslie, patiently. “It can just be us. We’ll split into teams or something.”

“Leslie Knope,” says Chris, bouncing to his feet so suddenly that he knocks Ann to the floor, “that is literally the most exciting idea I have heard all morning. A series of camp-wide sporting events would be a fantastic way to get everyone moving.”

“Are we doing this right now?” asks Ann, picking herself up. “It looks like it’s going to rain for the rest of the day.”

“No, not today,” says Leslie. “We’ll start planning today, but we should schedule it for the end of the summer, like a last day kind of thing. I think forming subcommittees is in order. No, first we should watch the end of the movie and take notes. We should all take detailed notes.” She jumps up and pauses the VCR.

Leslie’s binders are in the cabins, of course, so her first order of business is to staple loose-leaf paper into construction paper covers so that they all have official Olympiad planning notebooks. Darwish insists on his cover being black, and then he writes his name in black, so of course no one can read it. He and Leslie subsequently get into a long, mildly heated discussion over whether or not you _need_ to be able to read the cover of the notebook (she says yes because what if it gets misplaced, how will anyone know how to return it to him and he says no, it’s cooler this way and he’ll write his name on the inside, to which Leslie says that’s dumb, why would he want anyone opening his personal notebook…it goes on for a while until Ann finally convinces Leslie that there are more important battles to fight).

By dinnertime, they’ve watched the end of _Meatballs_ three more times, taking notes on all the events they might borrow or adapt from the film, and their discussion continues in the mess hall.

“Well, we already know we can’t do a full field hockey game,” says Leslie. She throws Ben a quick half-smile, which he returns. “But we can do baseball, hot dog eating, swimming…”

“And a cross-country run,” adds Chris, conveniently ignoring the fact that he’s the only person at camp who is going to want to do that.

“Look, guys,” says Darwish, spreading his hands flat on the table, “I would be all for this if it was a question of impressing hot girls from another camp. But since it isn’t, can we maybe plan some events for those of us who aren’t, you know, big dumb jocks?”

Leslie looks up from her pasta salad. “Like a quiz bowl or something?” she asks.

“Oh, we used to do competitions at my math camp,” Ben says, before he can stop himself.

“Yes, thank you, Ben,” says Darwish. “That would be an excellent idea if we were at nerd camp. But we’re not, so it’s a terrible idea. God, what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with him,” says Leslie, glaring at Darwish. (Ben can’t resist nudging her under the table.) “Do you have a better idea?”

“I have a _thousand_ better ideas,” he says. “Freestyle rapping contest, judged by Kid ‘n Play. Breakdancing dance-off. Bikini modeling. I wouldn’t be upset if that was a wet t-shirt contest instead. Game Boy competition. I could go on.”

Ann rolls her eyes. “Gross, Darwish.”

“We could do a dance-off,” says Leslie. “Great. You’re in charge of planning that.”

The campfire gets canceled that night, due to everything still being soaking wet, and the usual “exclusive” party in cabin six (Ben had finally seen Darwish’s list a few days ago; as he’d suspected, every girl in camp was on it) gets turned into a combination of Olympiad planning and the Emergency Task Force to Discuss Leslie’s Mother. It’s even more crowded than usual, since the rain means that no one has anywhere else to go.

“Okay, task force first,” says Leslie, climbing into Ben’s bunk, followed by Ann. Chris gets halfway up the ladder, then sticks his feet through the rungs, hangs upside down, and starts doing sit-ups.

“Nerds,” says Andy, reaching under his mattress.

“Not you, too,” Leslie groans.

Andy looks confused for a moment. “No, _Nerds_ ,” he clarifies, throwing a few of boxes of candy at them. Everyone but Chris takes a box.

“So,” says Ann. “What’s the plan?”

“Do we really need an extensive plan for this?” Ben asks. “Why can’t you just introduce me? You don’t have to tell her we’re doing anything.”

Leslie shakes her head. “My mother has, like, a sixth sense. She can tell these things.”

“You don’t know that,” Ann points out. “You’ve never dated anyone before.”

“First order of business,” says Leslie, ignoring Ann’s completely rational statement. “Ben, are your parents coming?”

“No,” he says. “It’s too far just for the one afternoon.”

“What’s Jess doing?” she asks, sounding concerned even though she's just taken a giant mouthful of Nerds.

Ben shrugs. “I don’t know. Hanging out with April and Shauna, I guess.”

“Well,” says Leslie. “My mother is definitely going to want to meet you at some point.”

“How do you know that if you haven’t told her—”

“Because she addressed all my letters to you,” Leslie says, pouring a bunch of Nerds into her palm and separating the grape from the strawberry, “and she, you know, put stickers on all the envelopes you sent me, and before I left for camp she gave me a lecture about how we were writing each other way too often and I’d better not be planning on letting any boys do anything to me…” She brushes the grape Nerds onto her planning binder and tosses the strawberry into her mouth.

“Oh.” He thinks he gets it now.

“And I know I’m not _letting_ you do anything,” she says quietly, through the mouthful of Nerds, “but I don’t think my mother is going to see it that way.”

“Okay,” Ben says. He’s starting to get a little nervous, now. “So she’ll be here for what, four hours? I’ll just avoid you most of that time, and then at some point, you can just be like, ‘Mom, this is Ben, he’s my pen pal and now we’re friends,’ and that’s all you have to say—”

“But when exactly am I supposed to say that?” she says, sounding a little hysterical. “I need to have the timing worked out. Maybe you should leave camp for the entire day. You could go to Snerling. They have a cow museum.”

“I don’t know where Snerling is, and I don’t have any way of getting there.” Cow museum?

“Ron can drive you. Or you could go to Indiana’s second-largest rocking chair, or—”

“Ben Wyatt,” says Chris, still doing sit-ups on the bed frame, “you would be more than welcome to spend the afternoon with my family. My parents would be _thrilled_ to meet you, and they will be bringing a variety of healthy foods with them. It will be literally the most spectacular picnic lunch imaginable.”

“Okay, thanks,” says Ben, a little uncertainly.

“Excellent!” says Chris, pulling up higher on the next sit-up and raising his hand for a high-five, which Ben returns. He wonders what kind of parents could possibly have produced someone like Chris.

For some reason, Ann looks a little put out, but then she shakes her head, and seems to be over it. “Leslie,” she says, firmly, “I think Ben’s right. I know your mom is intimidating, but you are kind of overreacting now.”

“She told me I’m not allowed to date until after college,” Leslie mutters. “She doesn’t want me getting distracted from my career goals.”

“Didn’t she also tell you there wasn’t anything wrong with being a wife and mother?” asks Ann.

“Sometimes I really don’t know what she wants,” Leslie sighs.

“Anyway, you,” says Ann, turning to Ben and pointing her index finger at him, “you behave yourself until this weekend. Don’t give Leslie any more hickeys.”

“Nerds!” yells Darwish, who apparently overheard that last part.

“Coming right up,” calls Andy, and suddenly Ben gets hit in the head with a flying box of candy. “Whoops. Sorry, Ben.”

That, at least, seems to signal the end of the emergency task force meeting.

The next couple of days are spent in a rush of event planning. Ben isn’t sure whose ideas are crazier, Leslie’s or Darwish’s. The dance-off sounds insane enough (even after Jerry nixes a request for blacklights) but Leslie keeps talking about building a petting zoo and bringing in a small horse? All the Pawnee kids freak out every time she says the horse’s name, and Andy keeps singing an original song about him, and Ben doesn’t get it at _all_.

When Saturday morning finally rolls around, he _does_ sort of understand why Leslie is so freaked out about him meeting her mother. Mrs. Griggs-Knope (or is it Ms.? He’s not sure if Leslie told him) is definitely the only parent who wore a pantsuit to visiting day.

But at least it’ll be over this afternoon. He’s not sure how much more of Leslie’s anticipation he can take. He’s already had to endure Ann popping into the cabin first thing this morning to pick out his clothes for him, and then Ann accompanying him to the cabin a second time to pick out a different shirt after Leslie somehow threw an entire glass of orange juice on him at breakfast.

“Okay,” she says, sounding determined. “Speed round. Let’s get this over with.” Her hair is in pigtails today, like she thinks they make her look more innocent or something.

“This is seriously going to be more suspicious than if you just introduce me at a normal speed,” he says, but she’s already sprinting away.

Yeah, he’ll just stay here.

“MomIwantyoutomeetBenhewasmypenpalsoIthoughtyouwouldwanttomeethimokaybyeBen!” Leslie gasps, dragging her mother past him.

“Leslie,” says Mrs. Griggs-Knope, sternly, putting on the brakes, “I thought we’d discussed how much sugar you’re allowed to eat for breakfast.” She turns her head and extends a hand. “Hello, Ben.”

“Hello,” he says, nervously, shaking it.

“Are your parents here today?” she asks. He feels very much as though he is being judged, and he wishes that Leslie hadn’t spilled an entire glass of orange juice on the shirt that Ann said was normal. (Ann had expressed doubts about this second shirt.)

“No, it was too far for them to drive just for one afternoon.”

“OkaygreatcomeonMomIwanttoshowyouallthetalentshowstuffwe’vebeenworkingon—”

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Benjamin,” says Mrs. Griggs-Knope, raising her eyebrows at him as Leslie drags her up the hill toward the rec building.

He nods.

“Why is he still standing there?” he hears Mrs. Griggs-Knope ask. He somehow has the feeling that he was supposed to overhear that. “That’s very odd. And where is Lindsay?”

Wait, why _is_ he still standing there?

It’s definitely weird to be at a parents’ visiting day without his parents there. He finds Jess. She seems a little down, too, but she won’t admit to being homesick. Darwish’s parents didn’t make the drive either, so they bust out Darwish’s Game Boy and have a Tetris tournament (Jess hums along idly with the music) until everyone starts showing off the cabin to their parents.

The Brandanawiczs are completely normal. Kind of boring, really. Mark points at everyone and announces their names in a monotone voice, and then they leave.

The Dwyers are super nice. “Ben’s teaching me to do laundry,” Andy tells his mother, proudly, and Mrs. Dwyer nearly starts crying. “God bless you,” she says, giving Ben an unexpected hug.

The Sapersteins seem disappointed that J.R. hasn’t completed his summer reading list, or carried out any ambitious leadership projects. In the three minutes they spend in the cabin, they manage to insinuate that he’s going to have to work harder than this in high school four times.

The Traegers love every single thing in the cabin. Actually, they love every single thing at the camp, and this seems to include Ben, who had no idea they even knew about him. (He hasn’t said anything to _his_ parents about Chris, really…) “That must be Ben!” says Mrs. Traeger, when all three of them burst through the cabin door at once (she doesn’t even give Chris time to point at Ben’s head) and she hugs him. What is _with_ all the hugging at this camp? None of Ben’s friends’ parents back home have ever hugged him—or not since, like, preschool, anyway. The Traegers sort of sweep Ben out of the cabin and down to the picnic tables by the lake, asking questions the entire time.

“Chris has told us so much about you, did you know that?”

“You certainly came a long way for this camp, didn’t you? How much snow do you get up there in Minnesota?”

“Do you have any pets?”

“We hear you’re an excellent shortstop. How long have you been playing baseball?”

“We brought Indian food from Chris’s favorite restaurant for the picnic. Do you like Indian food?”

“Chris isn’t waking you up too much during the middle of the night, is he? He has such a small bladder…”

Ben isn’t sure what’s weirder—the fact that Chris is not at all embarrassed by his mother talking about his urinary habits in front of his friends, or the fact that Chris likes Indian food. This is the first time Ben’s ever tried it, because of course there are no Indian restaurants in Partridge, and wow, it’s spicy. Way too spicy.

“Their mango chutney is amazing,” says Chris, apropos of nothing, spooning a huge dollop of orange goo onto Ben’s paper plate.

Oh, so that’s what that is. It does look like the paint chip.

“So, Ben, what do your parents do?”

“Do you know what classes you’re taking when you start school in the fall?”

“What’s your favorite movie?”

“Do you play any musical instruments?”

“Are you a big Vikings fan? We just love the Colts, although we can’t convince Chris to be interested in football. He’s so strange that way, isn’t he? Loving sports but hating football?”

“Ben!” yells Andy from a few tables over, waving. “Come on over here. My mom brought cupcakes.”

Oh, thank god.

“But Leslie’s plan…” says Chris.

Leslie’s plan cannot possibly be going that well—not because Ben’s said or done anything in front of Mrs. Griggs-Knope, but because Leslie is obviously trying to keep tabs on where he is, and then obviously trying to keep her mother from even looking in his direction. If he didn’t know better, he would think Leslie suspected him of being some sort of criminal.

“Also,” says Chris, handing Ben yet another paper plate of unidentifiable food, “we have gulab jaman! As you know, I don’t typically eat desserts, but they are absolutely irresistible.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Ben mutters. He thanks the Traegers for lunch, such as it was, and takes the plate over to the Dwyers’ table with him. Thank goodness they brought cupcakes.

***

This is going reasonably well, Leslie thinks. Well, okay, she’d had a hard time explaining her fight with Lindsay without inadvertently revealing any of the details she wouldn’t want her mother to know. But the parents are all leaving in half an hour, and she doesn’t think her mother suspects anything.

“I think she suspects something,” Ann mutters. Leslie’s mother is currently chatting about parent-teacher associations with Mrs. Perkins.

“What? No,” Leslie whispers back. “How could she?”

“One, you’ve been really jumpy today, even for you. Two, you keep staring at Ben.”

“I am not staring at him,” Leslie insists. “I’m just trying to figure out where he is so that we can avoid him.” She feels terrible for Ben, really, being subjected to all that Indian food. It looks like vomit, she thinks. And it probably smells funny. She’ll have to make him an extra s’more tonight to make up for it.

“Well, you’re being really obvious about it,” says Ann.

“Leslie,” says her mother, and oh god, that’s her stern voice isn’t it? Leslie runs over. But it isn’t a crisis. Her mother just wants to ask more questions about the Olympiad events they’re planning.

Actually, it looks like the boys are demonstrating some of the games down by the lake, so they all go down to watch. Andy’s in charge of the more non-traditional games and races, and he’s come up with some surprisingly good ideas, mostly by taking two things that already exist and putting them together.

“What’s going on here?” asks Mrs. Perkins, shielding her eyes against the afternoon sun.

“Piggyback egg-and-spoon races,” says Leslie. Andy has April on his back, and they’re racing Chris, who’s carrying Jess. It looks like Chris is in the lead, but then he spots them walking over, suddenly yells “Ann Perkins! Leslie Knope!” and waves, almost dropping poor Jess on the ground in the process. He recovers in time to keep her from falling, but her egg hits the ground.

“Seriously, Chris?” Jess asks, rolling her eyes, but Chris seems to be ignoring her even though she’s still on his back.

“You must be Ann and Leslie’s older sisters,” he says, winking at both mothers.

Ugh. But of course their parents are charmed by him. Leslie sits down on the grass; this might take a while, she thinks.

Ben suddenly sits down next to her, hands her a Coke, and glances at the moms. “Did he really just say that?” he mutters.

“Yeah, he did.” She pops open the can and takes a sip.

“Ugh,” he says. “I didn’t know anyone actually used that line in real life.”

She giggles. She can’t help it. It doesn’t matter, her mother isn’t looking. She’s too enthralled by Chris’s small talk. “That’s exactly what I just thought.”

“So does your mother suspect anything?”

Leslie frowns. “I don’t know. Ann thinks she might.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not that sneaky,” Ben says, but he’s smiling at her. “Also, you owe me an extra s’more.”

“Because of the Indian food?”

“No, because Chris’s parents are horrible,” he says, and she winces. “I’m kidding. They’re a lot like Chris, actually. Yes, because of the Indian food.”

“Was it really that bad?”

“Just spicy,” he says. “But I learned about chutney.”

Chris is _still_ chatting up their moms. She hopes he’s capable of keeping his mouth shut.

“What do you want to do after the parents leave?” Leslie asks. “Lake? I think Ann wants to go to the lake.”

He shrugs. “I’m supposed to finish a Tetris tournament with Darwish,” he says. “But if you’d rather go swimming, it can wait.”

“You just want to see me in my bathing suit,” she says, teasingly, waiting for Ben to turn pink…there he goes. She likes making him do that.

“Well, you can’t blame me,” he mutters, fidgeting a little.

“Leslie,” says Marlene, in her lowest, most serious voice. “Benjamin.”

Oh, crap. Leslie jumps about two feet (which is weird, she didn’t know she could do that sitting down) and somehow most of her Coke ends up on Ben’s shirt.

“Hi, Mommy,” she squeaks.

“Is there something that you aren’t telling me, Leslie?” Leslie can see Ann gesturing frantically behind her mother. She has no idea what Ann is trying to accomplish.

“No?” Leslie asks, tentatively. Crap, that shouldn’t have been a question.

Marlene just looks down at them, for an uncomfortably long time. She can sense Ben inching away from her, like that’s going to help.

“Leslie, walk to the car with me,” she says, imperially. “And you,” she continues, arching her eyebrows at Ben, “you keep your hands off my daughter, young man.”

Just when Leslie’s starting to think that Ben isn’t going to get any words out, he takes a deep breath and says (in a surprisingly confident voice), “Mrs. Griggs-Knope, I respect Leslie immensely.”

“Hmm,” says Marlene, and she turns on her heel and strides away.

Leslie shoots Ben a look that she hopes says both _I’m sorry_ and _I’m going to jump on you the minute my mother gets out of here_ , then accompanies Marlene to the car, biting her tongue the whole way.

Her mother opens her car door. “Sit,” she says, so Leslie climbs in the passenger seat while Marlene gets behind the wheel. “I thought we’d discussed that you’re too young for this.”

“Mommy, I’m not—” Her mother is not buying this at all. “Did Chris say something?”

“Leslie,” says Marlene, sternly, “I’m not blind. And neither of you are subtle.”

Crap. There’s only so long Leslie can withstand her mother’s raised eyebrow, and Marlene knows it.

“Wellwemighthavekissedacoupleoftimes,” she says, softly, staring at her shoes.

“And?”

“And that’s it.” Which it is, depending on the definition of “a couple.” A couple dozen would be more accurate, but…

“Was this your idea or his?” asks her mother.

“I—I think—it was a mutual decision,” she says. “Mutual decision” is a good phrase, right? It sounds official, like they thought about it rationally, and had a discussion. Multiple discussions, even.

“And what else has he tried to get you to do?”

“Nothing.” This part is really entirely true. She hasn’t even let Ben get to second base yet, and he hasn’t tried to go there, either. Okay, maybe a few times his hands have started to wander a little, but every time she gets even the slightest bit tense, he stops. And apologizes.

“And you expect me to believe this, Leslie?” Marlene asks. “Sweetheart, I know you think I’m old, but I remember being a teenager perfectly well.”

“I don’t think you’re old,” says Leslie, instantly. Maybe this will change the subject?

No. Crap. She’s getting the eyebrow again.

“Mom,” she says, trying to sound more mature than she feels, “we’re not doing anything we shouldn’t be. And he really does respect me. I made sure of that right away. Do you really think I would like someone who was a chauvinist or a misogynist or—or—”

And to her immense surprise, Marlene sighs a little, and then softens.

“I just don’t want you to get hurt, Leslie,” she says. “You’re still my little girl.”

“Mom…” Leslie trails off. Is this going to get embarrassing? She hopes this isn’t going to get embarrassing. She can already feel her cheeks starting to burn, a little bit.

“All right, sweetheart,” says her mother, leaning over to kiss Leslie on the forehead. “I trust your judgment.”

“Thanks, Mommy,” she says.

“Don’t let him get away with anything. If he starts pressuring you—”

“Don’t worry. Ron’s been teaching me self-defense.” She starts to get out of the car.

“Leslie?” says Marlene, and Leslie looks back. “He’s very odd, but he seems like a nice boy.”

And really, Leslie thinks as she runs back up to the cabins (she assumes Ben must be changing his shirt again), coming from her mother, that’s pretty high praise.

“Lake?” she asks, sticking her head into cabin six. “Or…or arts and crafts?” She can use that as code, right? They totally have a code.

“Is she gone?” Ben asks, looking around, like he expects Marlene to jump out of the woodwork. He is, in fact, wearing a different shirt. The previous two shirts are rinsed out and hanging from the end of his bed.

“She’s gone,” Leslie assures him. “I _think_ she liked you.”

“You could have fooled me,” he says.

“I know. I know it’s kind of hard to tell with her.” She clears her throat a little. “Also, she kind of made me promise to, you know, defend myself if you try to get away with anything.”

“Great,” Ben says. “That’s not intimidating at all.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be,” she says, quickly. “I know you wouldn’t ask me to do anything I didn’t want to. That’s one of the reasons I like you so much.”

Leslie kind of regrets that she’d returned the art supply closet key to Jerry, but luckily, it occurs to both of them that Ben really should go ahead and wash his shirts before the stains set, and no one else is going to be doing laundry on a Saturday afternoon right after all their parents have gone home.

So they can take advantage of that.

And really, it is a relief to sort of have her mother’s approval (and really the fact that Ben is still alive means her mother must have approved at least a little bit), because Leslie really does hate not being honest with her mother.

So now there’s really only one thing she wishes she could change about the summer, and that’s her fight with Lindsay. Every few days, she tries again to apologize or have a conversation or something, but Lindsay just turns up her nose every time, and stomps away.

“Even if we’re not best friends anymore, why can’t we just be regular friends?” She keeps asking Ann this, but Ann has yet to provide a satisfactory answer.

“Because she’s terrible, Leslie,” she says, which is all Ann’s ever had to say about Lindsay. “Are you forgetting all those horrible things she said about you?”

No. She isn’t. But she’d be willing to forgive Lindsay, probably.

Finally, one afternoon, she asks Ben. They’re measuring part of the sports field to see how much total space they’ll need for Andy’s entire list of relay races. For some reason, no one wanted to help them do that, not even Andy, so they’re alone and this is as good a time as any to talk. Assuming that they can talk and still manage to get all the calculations correct.

“I think she’s just really insecure,” Ben says. “I mean, she is acting kind of awful, but I think that’s why.”

“Insecure about what?” Leslie asks, because she seriously does not see how Lindsay has anything to be insecure about, other than being a terrible friend, which is something that she could fix pretty easily if she wanted to.

Ben stays quiet for a moment. Finally he says, “I can’t quite figure out how to explain it.”

“Well, try,” she says.

“Okay, well…I don’t know. She just seems insecure to me. Or self-conscious, maybe. I think Jerry’s pamphlets would call it not liking yourself enough.”

Ugh, those horrible pamphlets.

“But why wouldn’t she like herself? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, not to you, maybe,” he says, quietly, and then he seems embarrassed and won’t say anything else. Leslie mulls over their conversation for a while in bed that night, and remembers when he’d said that he wasn’t used to girls liking him. At the time, she’d thought it was a really weird thing to say, because after all he is obviously smart and funny and adorable and all kinds of fantastic. But if he hadn’t realized that, or didn’t believe it for some reason…

Really, the more Leslie thinks about it, the more she thinks Ben might be right about Lindsay. She knows Lindsay hates her nose, for one thing, although that’s not new, Lindsay’s always hated her nose. She just doesn’t understand why Lindsay would suddenly start acting like a different person because of that. Like, sometimes Leslie wishes she were taller, but most of the time she doesn’t even think about it, and only gets annoyed when she can’t reach something. But there’s nothing she can _do_ about it, just like there’s nothing Lindsay can do about her nose, so why is it even worth being upset over?

Somehow, though, she has a feeling that it would not be a good idea if she walked up to Lindsay and said “I don’t think you should care about your nose.” If Lindsay would even let her get the words out. So far, she hasn’t.

And one night she flips through a couple of the issues of _Seventeen_ that are always around their cabin (she figures it’s safe; she knows not to trust the dating advice now), and it strikes her how hard the magazine seems to be insisting that life is better when you’re thin and pretty and your nose is straight. Considering how easy everything seems to be for Ann most of the time, it might actually be right.

She kind of wants to burn _all_ of the magazines now, not just the dating advice columns.

So Leslie keeps trying. She asks Lindsay to help with organizing the scavenger hunt for the Olympiad (because she would be really good at it, Leslie knows she would), and she asks Lindsay to give input on Darwish’s choreography for the Star Wars dance (okay, he stole it from a NKOTB video, but it works, so she’s letting him do it because he knows the steps better than she does), and she asks Lindsay to suggest VHS tapes that Jerry might buy for camp other than _Meatballs_.

Lindsay refuses to so much as answer her. So she’s trying, and failing. And it’s starting to piss her off. Or make her really sad. Or maybe both.

Finally, one day, she’s alone in her cabin, updating her dream journal (she hasn’t had a chance to do that in _ages_ ), when Lindsay runs in, sobbing.

Oh, _crap_. Now what? A few months ago, Leslie wouldn’t have hesitated to run over, hug Lindsay, and ask her what was wrong, but she’s really tired of having her head bitten off.

She can’t _ignore_ Lindsay, though, can she?

No. She can’t.

“Um, Lindsay?” she asks, slowly. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Lindsay snaps.

Obviously something is wrong. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not. Go away.”

“Okay, fine,” says Leslie, prickling. “Be that way. Don’t tell me anything.”

“You can’t do anything anyway,” Lindsay spits out, between sobs. “Just leave me alone.”

Seriously? “Fine, then,” Leslie says, and she bangs the cabin door shut on her way out…and runs smack into Chris, who’s dripping wet and wearing his swim trunks.

“Leslie Knope,” he says, sounding concerned, “is everything okay? You look upset.”

She shakes her head. “It’s just Lindsay.”

To her immense surprise, Chris pushes past her, bounces into the cabin, and sits down on Lindsay’s bed, putting his hand on her back. She can’t quite make out what Chris is saying, though. Then she feels weird about eavesdropping, and walks a few feet in front of the cabin, where she sits in the grass and starts breaking a twig into tiny pieces.

She’s up to a third twig when Donna shows up, also wearing a bathing suit and dripping wet.

“Don’t go in there,” Leslie says. “Lindsay’s…I don’t know. Something’s wrong, but she won’t tell me what.”

Donna raises her eyebrows. “Where have you been all morning? In the art supply closet?”

Crap, Donna knows about that? “No, I…” She trails off, not really sure what else to say, since she did in fact spend a fair amount of time in the art supply closet this morning.

Donna sits down next to her. “Brandanawicz.”

“Again?”

“And Joan, this time. At the lake.”

“What were they doing?” she asks, although she feels like she already knows the answer.

Donna purses her lips. “Guess.”

Yeah, that’s what she thought.

Ann walks up too, also in her swimsuit. “Is Chris in there?” she says, sounding concerned.

“Yeah, he is,” says Leslie.

“Why?” asks Ann. She sounds a little bit upset.

Leslie shrugs. “I think he’s just talking to her.”

Ann huffs. “Why would he leave me at the lake and run up here just so he could talk to her?”

“I don’t know,” says Leslie, because she doesn’t.

“Leslie,” Ann pleads, “go and see what Chris is doing in there, will you?”

Is it safe to go into the cabin? Leslie gets up and sidles up to the door. She isn’t trying to spy on Lindsay and Chris, exactly…okay, she’s totally trying to spy on them, and this is probably going to go badly, and maybe she should just walk in the cabin.

“Hey,” she says, quietly. “Is everything okay?”

“So you have to go out there and be the person you always knew you could be,” Chris is saying. Lindsay still looks upset, but she isn’t crying any more. “Leslie!” he continues, pointing at her. “I was just going to go looking for you. You are literally the person we most need to talk to right now.”

“Okay,” she says, uncertainly.

“Lindsay, go ahead,” says Chris, encouragingly.

Lindsay sighs, and blows her nose. Then she stares at the floor and mumbles, “I’ll help with your thing.”

So it isn’t exactly an apology, but it’s something. And even though she’s still not sure they’re friends again, at least they aren’t enemies. Plus, she was right—Lindsay is organizing a fantastic scavenger hunt, and almost entirely on her own, since either she won’t work with anyone or no one wants to work with her (Leslie isn’t entirely sure which). But she seems a little happier, maybe, and some days she doesn’t even wear the giant sweatshirt.

And, okay, they can’t get Li’l Sebastian or any kind of petting zoo, and Jerry won’t let them have any sort of celebrity guest judge for the dance-off, not even Perd Hapley, who’s barely a celebrity. Plus, Ann and Chris are going through some weird thing where it’s like Ann’s just now noticed that Chris is super nice to everyone, including all the other girls at camp. Or maybe it’s just Ann going through some weird thing. Leslie’s kind of under the impression that Chris has no idea that Ann is mad at him.

“Just talk to him, Ann,” she says (in her best Ron impersonation, which maybe isn’t all that good), but maybe that advice doesn’t work for this kind of problem, because Ann _does_ talk to Chris, and then she and Leslie rehash the conversation endlessly, and Leslie has to admit that she doesn’t understand what the hell is going on with them either.

But everything else is going well. It’s going really, really well. The games are coming together and the talent show is practically perfect.

One afternoon in the laundry room (they’ve discovered that the laundry room has lower foot traffic than the art supply closet), she even lets Ben get to second base—sort of, anyway. Just over her shirt. That’s kind of a lot of fun, partially because it’s fun on its own, and partially because Ben jumps backwards about a foot when she grabs his hand and puts it there, and knocks over an entire bottle of laundry detergent that didn’t have its cap screwed on. And once they’ve cleaned up the detergent spill as best they can, and gotten back to the real task at hand, he becomes a _lot_ more enthusiastic.

This means that there’s only one real problem.

They only have about a week and a half left in which to get to second base. Leslie really doesn’t want to think about what’s going to happen afterwards, and she suspects that Ben doesn’t either.

“How long did it take you to drive to camp?” she asks at the campfire one night, with about a week to go.

“Twelve hours to my aunt’s house in Muncie, and another two here, I think. We might have backtracked some.”

They sneak up to the reading room and find an old atlas. Partridge isn’t even on the map of Minnesota, but Ben points to where it should be, and…yeah, it’s probably at least a twelve-hour drive from Pawnee.

“More if traffic slows down around Chicago,” Ben says, glumly. “Which it always does.”

A few days later, she asks how often they visit his relatives in Muncie, and he says maybe once every three years or so.

Leslie’s never been to Minnesota. She’s only been to Chicago a couple of times.

When she talks to her mother that night, Marlene asks if she’s still “messing around with that boy,” and when Leslie says yes, Marlene tells her flat-out that the idea of continuing their relationship after camp ends is totally unreasonable.

“My mom kind of said the same thing,” says Ben, squeezing her arm as she tries not to cry onto her graham crackers. “Except she tried to be funny about it.”

“This sucks,” she says. Suddenly she doesn’t even want the stupid s’more.

“It really sucks.” He isn’t eating his s’more either, she notices.

“Oh, _Leslie_ ,” says Ann, after she’s caught Leslie staring vacantly into the bathroom mirror for more than five minutes in the process of brushing her teeth. “It does suck, but there are other boys. You’ll meet someone else. And once school starts, you’ll probably be too busy to have time for that anyway.”

“I guess,” Leslie says. If she felt like thinking rationally, she would agree that all the things Ann just said were true. She’d kind of rather be sad, though. “What are you and Chris doing?”

Ann looks bewildered. “I already broke up with him.”

“Wait, what? When did you do that?”

“A couple of days ago,” she says, shrugging.

“Because of Lindsay?”

“No, because we don’t live anywhere near each other. I’m kind of tired of him anyway.”

Ah. It seems that Ann’s finally gotten to the point where Chris being incredibly hot does not make up for the fact that he spends 90 percent of his waking hours exercising, 9.8 percent lecturing other people about exercising, and only about 0.2 percent spending time with Ann.

“And at least three-quarters of that 0.2 percent,” Ann says, grimly, “is talking about how great everyone else in the world is.” She rattles around in her cosmetic bag and pulls out her astringent. “So really, he’s just hot and kind of good at kissing. I’m over it.” She puts the astringent down on the sink and runs one hand through her hair. “Do you think my mom would let me get my hair streaked pink?”

Ben looks moderately concerned at breakfast the next morning. “Is Ann okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, she’s fine. Why?”

“When we were running this morning, Chris told me he dumped her two days ago.”

“That’s weird,” she says. “Last night, Ann told me that she dumped Chris two days ago.”

They both look over to the left side of the mess hall, where Ann and Chris are sitting with each other, having a perfectly enthusiastic conversation. Well, Chris isn’t really capable of toning it down, is he? But still.

“I don’t get it,” Ben says, and Leslie has to agree.

With four days to go, Leslie suddenly becomes desperately upset that she isn’t going to get to compete in the Olympiad because she’s running it, and makes Andy run her through every single one of the wacky relay race games. She isn’t even sure why she suddenly wants to try them all, but Andy’s happy to oblige, so she rounds up the main organizing crew for a full trial run. Maybe she’s been letting Andy have too much freedom with these ideas, she thinks, when she sees his full list. The piggyback egg-and-spoon race is one thing (she and Ben totally win, because Leslie is awesome at egg-and-spoon races). The dizzy potato sack race is kind of fun too, although Darwish nearly passes out.

Piggyback musical chairs turns out to be a really bad idea. Even Andy agrees that they should probably nix that one.

And Leslie has a couple of reservations about the blindfolded three-legged race after J.R. and Donna take out a trash barrel and Andy and Lindsay crash into the equipment shed. They decide to leave that one in, though.

She also has the funny feeling that if she was trying to distract herself from the fact that she only has four days left with Ben, spending the afternoon running around with her leg tied to his was probably not the best idea.

With three days left to go, they sneak away from the campfire and go almost all the way around the lake. They find a spot that isn’t too wet with dew, and they lie on their backs and stare at the stars, holding hands. The Olympiad is tomorrow, and she thinks—no, she _knows_ that everything is as perfect as they can make it, but she’s spent all day with Joan following her around insinuating that it’s going to be a disaster. She knows it won’t be; all of the younger kids are super excited about the games, and they’ve done everything that they can possibly do, but the whole day was still kind of stressful.

“It isn’t even about the making out,” Ben says, breaking a long silence. “I’m just really going to miss you.”

“I know,” she says. “This sucks.”

“It really sucks.”

When they finally go back to their respective cabins, Leslie gets another talking-to from Ann about how there are other fish in the sea and all that nonsense. Ann is just trying to help, Leslie knows that, but man, is she wrong. Leslie supposes she could go back to Pawnee and find another boyfriend or whatever. But how is she supposed to explain to Ann that she doesn’t actually care whether or not she has a boyfriend, that what she cares about is _Ben_? It’s not about him being her boyfriend, it’s about him being a really awesome friend who is also a boy, and who just happens to be really ridiculously cute, and awesome at kissing, and likes to do stuff with her, and…

She really can’t think of a way to explain that.

And besides, even though Ann is wrong, she’s also right. Because she is going to have to break up with him. Or no, she isn’t exactly, it’s just going to happen regardless of whether either of them want it to, and they’re just going to have to deal with it.

Maybe she should try to invent teleportation.

“Are you good at science?” Ben asks, when she suggests it at breakfast the next morning.

“Yeah, but I’m better at other things.”

“Like organizing giant field days?” he says, giving her a little smile, and she squeezes his leg under the picnic table.

“Yeah, things like that.”

And the entire day goes off without a hitch. It’s absolutely perfect. Well, Orin gets a pretty bad sunburn (apparently the hour he spends doing Andy’s relay races is the longest he’s ever been in direct sunlight), but other than that, the entire Olympiad is flawless. Even Joan says so.

Chris wins the dance-off, to everyone’s surprise. April wins the scavenger hunt, to no one’s surprise. Nobody gets injured during any of Andy’s relay races, not even when Andy handicaps himself by running the piggyback egg-and-spoon race blindfolded with Jess on his back (thank goodness this happens while Ben is far away in the rec building, running the math bowl). They have a baseball game and a swimming race and Capture the Flag, and Chris has even convinced a few kids to run a plain old hundred-meter dash, so everyone is happy, and everyone winds up with at least one award, not that that was the point. At dinner that night, they give Ron an honorary prize for Outstanding Hamburger Cooking, and he gruffly accepts, although he refuses to give a speech. Really, Leslie couldn’t have asked for a better day.

“We should do this earlier in the year next year,” she muses out loud. “Like for the first parents’ weekend. I bet they’d like to watch.” Then she remembers that this is her last year at camp, and that makes her a little sad. What on earth is she going to do next summer?

And Jerry surprises _everybody_ , even Leslie, by pulling a brand-new VHS out from behind his back and announcing that tonight’s movie is going to be _Star Wars_. The entire camp cheers, but they all get bored pretty instantly, because of course Jerry refuses to fast-forward through the Leonard Maltin interview at the beginning.

“I have this at home, you know,” Ben says, quietly, so they sneak out of the rec building and wander down by the lake.

“Did you pack?” she asks.

“Not yet.”

“Me either.”

“Shouldn’t you do that now? Like, don’t you have to run the talent show tomorrow?”

“I guess.” She kicks a rock into the lake. “I don’t really care about the stupid talent show right now.”

“Hey,” he says, and he takes her hand. “It’s not stupid. It’s going to be great, just like today was.”

“And then,” she says, trying not to sound too bitter, “and then it’s going to be over.” She isn’t talking about the stupid talent show right now.

“I know.” He sighs. “And then we go home and deal with school and all of that.”

“Are you sure,” says Leslie, looking up at him, “are you absolutely sure you can’t convince your parents to move to Indiana? It wouldn’t have to be Pawnee. I mean, obviously they would _want_ to move to Pawnee, it’s the best town in America, but—”

He kisses her then, not desperately like she maybe would have expected, but kind of slowly and deliberately, with his hands in her hair. Damn it, she thinks when he pulls away. That was kind of perfect, except for the mosquito bite she just got on her left calf. She fights the urge to scratch it, because she doesn’t want to move yet. She just wants to stay here, in this little bubble…

“Damn it, Ben,” she says, dropping her head onto his chest. “Stop being so perfect.”

He laughs, a tiny bit. She can’t hear it, but she can feel it through her forehead. “I hate this. You know that, right? I really hate this.”

“I hate it too.” She sighs, and lifts her head. “But I guess it’ll be okay. Eventually.”

“Eventually,” he agrees. “Like, don’t—” and she can hear that slightly dry, sarcastic edge coming back into his voice now, “don’t turn down the captain of the football team because you think—”

“Ew,” she says, trying to sound playful. It’s hard, but if they can’t make this at least a little bit funny, she’s going to cry. “Like I’d be interested in a football player.”

“Well, you never know,” he says. “What if he really liked politics?”

“Maybe then.” They start walking back to the cabins. “And don’t you go turning down the head cheerleader just because—”

“What makes you think we have cheerleaders?”

“Everywhere has cheerleaders.”

“Okay. We have cheerleaders. We have about eight cheerleaders.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Well, they’ll all be dating the football players.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Isn’t that how high school works?”

“I guess so,” she says.

They walk in silence for a little while.

“I’m serious, though,” he says, stopping abruptly. “We can’t—we can’t _not_ do things because of—you know. It wouldn’t be fair. To either of us.”

Leslie feels tears welling up behind her eyes, but she blinks them back. “I wish you weren’t right,” she says, bitterly.

“Me too.”

And she wants him to kiss her again, but he doesn’t, and she hates that. She understands why he doesn’t, though, and she hates that too.

“I’m still going to write you letters,” she says, trying to smile. He tries to smile back.

“Good.”

Cabin seven is incredibly chaotic that night; they’re all trying to pack, and there are a lot of shouts of “That’s my hairbrush” and “Has anyone seen another sock like this?” Leslie’s grateful for the noise, although she isn’t talking very much herself. It keeps her mind off of…stuff.

They eat breakfast together the next morning, but in a group with everybody, and on opposite sides of the picnic table. It’s okay.

Really, the whole morning is kind of a blur, partially because of the chaos and partially because she’s in such a weird mood. Everyone is running around like crazy, and it just gets worse when the parents start trickling in. Her own mother isn’t coming at all today—she called last night; something to do with one of the elementary school cafeterias being overrun with raccoons again—so Leslie is going back to Pawnee with Ann’s mom (thankfully, Lindsay’s parents are picking her up, so Leslie won’t have to endure another two hours of Lindsay and Ann bickering). She’s about to leave her cabin and head up to the rec building, just to give herself something to do, when Ben sticks his head in the door.

“Um, my parents want to meet you,” he says. “If that’s okay.”

Oh, yeah. She probably should have expected that.

They’re standing in front of Ben’s cabin with Jess, and Leslie giggles in spite of herself.

“Yeah, I know,” Ben mutters, as they walk over. “We’re all wearing plaid. It wasn’t planned.”

She tries her best to be cheerful, until she and Jess have to go up and get ready for the performance. They go on a walk around the camp, and describe all of yesterday’s events, so at least she has something to talk about—although Jess is really doing most of the talking. Thank goodness Jess has enough sense not to mention the blindfolded piggyback rides.

Apart from Jerry’s introduction, complete with a spectacular mispronunciation of “pianists,” the talent show is absolutely flawless. All the backdrops look perfect, everyone remembers all the words to the Disney medley, and Darwish’s light saber choreography is pretty fantastic (and the light sabers look great too; Leslie can’t help but look at Ben’s mom during that one, and she seems impressed). J.R. has finally mastered an original rap with actual rhyming, and everyone seems to enjoy “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Finally, even though he never did manage to put a band together, Andy absolutely brings down the house with his Li’l Sebastian song. Ron even has to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. (Although she notices that all of the Wyatts look baffled.)

But really, she couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Well, she wishes it was still going on, because now that it’s over…

She nabs one of the light sabers, the one with the shortest blade, and stuffs it in her suitcase, hoping that the papier-mâché won’t get crushed. Then she just sort of wanders around aimlessly, waiting for Ann’s mom to tell her it’s time to go.

Ben finds her first, just as she’s walking past the laundry room. His hair is sticking straight up, and he looks miserable.

“We’re leaving,” he says, “just as soon as Jess finishes packing.”

“She hasn’t finished?”

“She hadn’t started.” He sighs. “Okay, I promised myself that this wasn’t going to happen, but…” He grabs her hand, and they run up the stairs into the laundry room.

This time the kissing really does feel frantic, and urgent, and kind of desperate, but they probably only have a few minutes anyway, so thank god they’re doing it. Well, not _it_ , of course, but…but she should stop thinking, is what she should do, and just try to enjoy this while it lasts. For another five minutes. Before he’s gone and she never sees him again, probably.

Damn it.

“Well,” he says, after way too short an interval. “I—I guess I should go.” He isn’t letting go of her, though.

“I guess I should too,” she says, and she isn’t letting go of him either.

“Don’t forget me when you’re president,” he says, managing to smile a little bit, although he still looks miserable.

“How could I?” she asks, trying to smile back. She doesn’t think she’s succeeding. “Don’t forget me when you’re in the majors.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” he says. “But I won’t forget you.”

“Tell me when you visit Muncie again, at least.”

“I will.”

“In case your parents might let you come to Pawnee.”

“They might,” he says. “They _loved_ you.”

And then there’s a knock on the door. “I know you’re both in there,” calls Ann. “So does Jess. You might want to come out before she drags Ben’s parents over here.”

And that’s it.

Her mother takes her to JJ’s for dinner that night, but the waffles taste kind of funny. She sort of thinks they might taste funny for a while.


	10. Epilogue, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...

Of course they aren’t going to see each other after camp is over. How could they? Ben doesn’t visit his relatives in Muncie very often, and it’s not exactly close to Pawnee anyway, and Leslie has no reason to ever go anywhere near Minnesota. So what are they supposed to do other than have one last secret, epic makeout session in the laundry room (and maybe Leslie gets a little reckless and lets his hands wander more than she normally would—and maybe her hands are wandering a little bit too), and then move on with their lives?

It still sucks. In fact, it sucks a lot, especially at first. They don’t even go home right away, which somehow makes things worse. The Wyatts spend a couple of days in Muncie with Ben’s aunt and uncle and his cousin Richie. Ben has to try very hard not to be gloomy and depressed the entire time, and he has to try even harder not to be in a bad mood on the drive back home. Jess taunts him the entire time, which isn’t helping.

They stop for gas in Indianapolis, and Ben’s dad gets all excited because one of the Pacers is pumping gas too, and there’s an awkward round of “Hi, are you…” and even more awkward picture-taking.

“Oh, I love those books,” says the basketball player, in a German accent, and Ben isn’t sure why he would really _want_ his copy of _Lord of the Rings_ autographed by Detlef Schrempf, but now it is. He supposes it might be a conversation piece. When they get the photos developed, Ben thinks he looks even more miserable than he did in the graduation dance pictures.

Practically the instant they get back to Partridge, the mailman arrives with a large package for him. It’s a photo album, or maybe more of a scrapbook, since every page is filled with photo captions and comments and stickers and drawings of unicorns and glitter glue designs. It ends with a twenty-page handwritten essay on the history of Pawnee, “so whenever you get to visit, you’ll be prepared.”

“Good lord, how did she get that done so quickly?” wonders his mother, but both Ben and Jess assure her that this is totally normal for Leslie. The only thing that’s surprising about it is that he has no recollection of anyone at camp having a camera. Unfortunately, since he opened the package in front of his mother and Jess, they both insist on looking through the album, and parts of it are kind of…well, Leslie drew a lot of hearts, and Ben has to make both his mom and Jess swear that they will never, ever mention this photo album to anyone for as long as they live.

He hides the album in his one desk drawer that locks, and refuses to acknowledge it out loud, ever. But secretly he loves it, of course, and looks at it way too often over the next couple of months (if such a thing is possible) until he decides that it’s probably not healthy to be dwelling on her this much and makes himself stop.

This is not the only piece of mail that arrives from Indiana. He starts receiving postcards from Chris, always featuring photos of people exercising, with bizarre motivational messages written on the back. They’re oddly reassuring, somehow, although Ben has _no_ idea how Chris even got his address.

 _“Let your brain be the key to unlocking the future of your heart’s passionate desire.” I’m still working on this particular epithet, so I would like to hear your thoughts on this draft, Ben Wyatt, because I value your opinion very much._ (Ben’s mom finds that particular postcard so funny that she hangs it on the fridge and refuses to take it down for an entire year.)

So yeah, overall the whole situation sucks, but really his life could be worse. Starting high school turns out to be a lot easier than Ben thought it was going to be. His braces come off almost as soon as he gets home, and he gets the contact lenses that his parents promised, and thank god for both those things. Plus, he’s somehow grown almost three inches over the summer without realizing it, and gotten a suntan, and he’s in pretty great shape thanks to Chris. In fact, it’s probably more than a month before Ben can look at himself in the mirror without feeling at least a little bit shocked. His suntan fades pretty quickly, because this is Minnesota after all. But all the other changes seem to be permanent. He even keeps working out in the mornings, although admittedly at about one-tenth the intensity of what Chris was having him do (the endorphin rush really does help). And oddly enough, everyone at school seems to think that since he no longer looks like a nerd, he isn’t one.

He lets them think that, continues to watch all three _Star Wars_ movies more often than he probably should, and remains vaguely astounded by how much more attention he’s suddenly getting from girls, though he tries very hard not to let on how surprised he is every time it happens.

 _“Inner beauty is very important. So is external beauty, according to the ancient Greeks. I believe that you embody both of these qualities.” Ben, do you think this is an appropriate statement to make to a very lovely female person in my art class? She is literally the prettiest girl in this entire high school._ Like Chris needs help with girls, Ben thinks.

"Well, my mom liked it," he writes back.

Leslie sends him letters every so often, and Ben becomes shockingly well informed about the extracurricular activities offered at Pawnee High. She also sends cards for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day (the card has kissing penguins on it, but she keeps the inside relatively platonic) and Easter. Ben answers all of them.

He actually does like the new carpet in his bedroom, and the plaid curtains. (The Princess Leia poster is not only still on his wall, it also got framed at some point during the summer.) The Wyatts get a puppy just before Christmas, a goofy, clumsy German Shepherd mix who almost instantly leaves claw marks in the new linoleum floor in the kitchen. Jess insists on naming him Sebastian, and Ben knows she got it from that stupid singing crab, but sometimes he likes to pretend that the dog has a “Li’l” in front of his name because he knows Leslie would appreciate it.

The dog, of course, turns out to be enormous.

“I love Chris,” states Ben’s mom, flatly, after Ben receives a postcard reading _“Go ultra-confidently in the direction of your most magnificent dreams. Live a better life than the one you’ve always imagined.” Don’t you think this is an improvement, Ben? I don’t understand why the authors of these inspirational quotes so often fail to embrace modifiers and superlatives._ “I think you should invite him to come visit next summer,” she says.

“No, that’s okay,” says Ben, although it would be an excellent test of the strength of their new bathroom plumbing.

He gets elected freshman class president (he’s not really sure how, but he thinks Cindy might have had something to do with it), and makes the JV baseball squad, as the starting shortstop. The only other person competing for the starting position is Steve, and Ben tries to pretend that it doesn’t feel particularly good to beat him, even if he isn’t mad at Steve anymore. Or was he ever really mad at Steve? Jealous of him, maybe. Well, whatever it was, he’s pretty much over it now.

Ben successfully asks a girl to the spring semi-formal, and they have a good time. They hang out in a big group sometimes over the summer, but he never kisses her, and he steadfastly denies that they’re actually dating, because they aren’t.

Leslie sends him an Indianapolis Indians t-shirt for his fifteenth birthday, and Ben sends her a book about Minnesota’s female Scandinavian pioneers for hers.

The next year, the letters slow down, and he only gets Christmas and birthday cards from her, and a Sweetums “Pawnee Special” chocolate raccoon at Easter. He forgets her sixteenth birthday, and then remembers it a week after the fact, feels terrible, and sends her a stuffed penguin wearing a hockey jersey as an apology. ( _I assume it’s supposed to be playing ice hockey, but maybe you can pretend it’s field hockey instead,_ he writes.) She sends him a thank-you card that just says “It’s so cute.”

He winds up dating Katie Cooper for about two months during the fall of his junior year without really knowing how they started going out in the first place—well, he knows he asked her out, obviously, but the details of how exactly she became his girlfriend remain kind of unclear. He’s not unhappy about it, at any rate. Katie is extremely attractive, he can’t deny that, and most of the guys on the JV team express their jealousy at the fact that Ben gets to make out with Katie and touch her boobs. But even though he enjoys doing those things with her (and who wouldn’t, she really does have great boobs), and she’s really nice and he does like her, it just isn’t special at all, and they both know it. It’s honestly kind of a relief when she dumps him right before winter break.

The Wyatts go to Muncie for Thanksgiving that year. Ben wonders if he should tell Leslie he’s _finally_ coming back to Indiana and can she drive up, or if he should try to go to Pawnee himself, but he can’t bring himself to do it even though he’d promised her that he would. He’s dating Katie, after all, and the idea of seeing Leslie after all this time just feels too weird. They’d have what, a couple of hours at most? And what would they even do, considering that their parents would be around? And who is he to think that she’d even want to do anything or even see him at all, anyway? Well, of course she’d want to _see_ him, she’s Leslie and she would be excited to see anybody whose acquaintance she’d ever made, but would she really want to _see him_? Probably not.

Her Christmas card that year says she’d spent Thanksgiving in Florida with her dad. So there.

That spring, Leslie sends him her junior prom picture, and it’s the first picture of herself she’s sent since the photo album. She and Ann are posed in front of a staircase, as you do, and they’re both wearing hideous, poofy, shiny dresses, but the giant red-headed guy who’s apparently Leslie’s date looks thrilled to be with her. (“That’s Dave,” says a note on the back of the photo, and “Did I tell you Lindsay had a nose job? She got elected prom queen. Go figure.”) Ann’s date is some immensely tall kid with greasy, grunge band-style facial hair and a mismatched, ill-fitting tux that’s at least a decade out of style, and it takes Ben a few minutes to realize that he’s looking at Andy. Wow, he would never have pictured the two of them together.

For his own junior prom, Ben lets Steve set him up—or really, he lets Steve get Cindy to set him up. (Steve has been on and off again with Cindy ever since high school started, and they’re on right now.) The experience is neither particularly good nor particularly bad overall; he isn’t all that attracted to his date, and she clearly isn’t very attracted to him either, but they make the best of it. Cindy drags Ben onto the dance floor when Steve gets distracted by a belching contest, Ben wonders out loud when belching contests are going to stop being a thing, and she laughs and calls him a terrible dancer, which he is. But it’s totally fun and easy and he’s glad they’re friends. It’s honestly a little weird to think that he ever had a crush on her. He wonders if she ever knew about that (he suspects she did) but doesn’t ask.

On the first day that Ben really, seriously starts to think about where he should be sending his SAT scores, he receives a package containing brochures and application packets for what he thinks must be every single college in Indiana, and quite a few that are within easy driving distance of Indiana. How is her timing always so perfect? “Just wanted you to have this information,” Leslie’s written on a Post-It note stuck to the front of the bundle, and “This one’s my first choice” on the brochure for Indiana University.

He adds half a dozen of her suggestions to his short list, reasoning that it never hurts to have options, even if he thinks he’ll end up at U of M like pretty much everyone else.

“NYU or Northwestern,” says Jess, confidently, flipping through the stack of brochures.

“Why?” NYU isn’t even in Leslie’s pile.

“Because their colors are purple, and I want to go to New York. Or Chicago. New York would be better, though.”

“Those aren’t good reasons to go somewhere,” he points out. He isn’t entirely sure how much money is in his college fund. “I’m not picking a college based on where you want to go on vacation or your favorite color.”

“They’re also very good schools,” says his mother. “Honestly, kiddo, college is your time for adventure. Apply anywhere you want, and if you get in, then we’ll figure out whether we can afford it.”

So he applies. Not to NYU, though. He thinks there might be too many people in New York.

Ben doesn’t hear from Leslie again after that, not until the unthinkable happens, and there are photographers and journalists _everywhere_ for about a month and he can’t even see straight. She sends him a clipping from the Pawnee newspaper and a note saying _Congratulations, Mr. Mayor. Do you have any idea how jealous I am? (Of course you do. Why didn’t you send me your campaign speeches? Jerk.) You’re going to be great. By the way, Ann bet me I couldn’t get your autograph._ And he means to write back to her, he really does, but by the time that article has appeared everything is already going to hell. He ends up shoving her envelope in the back of his desk drawer with the photo album. Within two days, the hearings have started, and he completely forgets about it.

On the worst day of his life (nothing could ever be worse than this, ever), Ben pushes his way out of Partridge’s City Hall, muttering “no comment” to all the reporters and not looking at them or at his family or at anyone else, really. There’s no point. His father hasn’t even spoken to him for weeks. Jess keeps insisting that he’s ruined her life, and last night he finally snapped and yelled “Fuck you, I’ve ruined my own life more than yours” at her—and he hasn’t apologized for that; how could he? His mother isn’t even trying to mess up his hair anymore, which oddly enough is probably the worst part, the part that most clearly signals that his life is never, ever going to go back to normal.

Even the dog hates him now. Last week Sebastian ate Ben’s baseball glove and then threw it up on his bed.

So everything is hopelessly bleak and it probably will be forever, because both he and Jess are right, he’s ruined their lives. This suit is itchy and uncomfortable, and it doesn’t even fit right. The pants are way too big, and the jacket is baggy, and this necktie is stupidly wide. He thinks he probably looks like garbage, which is only appropriate, because he certainly feels that way. He shrugs off the jacket, unbuttons his cuffs, and rolls his sleeves up to the forearm without really knowing why he’s doing any of those things.

Ben is just about to rip off the awful necktie and throw it in the street when he sees a beat-up old sedan with Indiana plates and a Pawnee Middle School bumper sticker parked half a block down from City Hall. There’s a glare on the windshield and he can’t see the driver, but it’s not like he’s kept in touch with anyone else from Pawnee.

But no, it couldn’t be.

He walks up to the car, heart pounding, one hand still on the knot of his tie, in case he needs to strangle himself all of a sudden or something.

It is.

She stretches across the passenger seat and opens the door for him. “Hi,” she says, smiling a little.

He climbs in, buckles the seatbelt with trembling fingers, and just stares at her as she maneuvers the car through the crowds of reporters and angry citizens.

They’re all the way into the next town, almost twenty miles away, before she speaks again.

“I don’t actually know where we are right now,” she admits, pulling into the parking lot of a playground. She turns off the car and turns to look at him.

“Leslie,” he says finally, trying not to shake too much, “what are you doing here?”

She shrugs. “I thought you might need a friend.”

A million possible responses run through his head, like _But we haven’t seen each other in four years_ and _I have friends here, in theory, although they won’t be seen in public with me right now or possibly ever again_ and _Why do you have the same haircut as my grandmother?_ , but he can’t actually get any words to come out.

“Ann’s back at the motel, napping,” Leslie continues. “She drove up with me. We told our parents we were going on campus tours for spring break. Ann keeps having second thoughts about where she wants to go, so it worked. I think.”

“And—and you actually went on the tours?” Ben asks. She’s wearing a Golden Gophers sweatshirt, and there’s a Carleton College brochure under his feet.

“We had to. I’m not very good at being sneaky, you know that. Now this is legit.” She grins at him. “Besides, you’ve met my mom. Can you imagine her letting me drive twelve hours just to visit some nerdy kid I made out with at camp one summer?”

He can’t.

“Come on, let’s go for a walk,” she says, getting out of the car. He doesn’t move, so she walks around to the passenger side and yanks his door open. “It’ll be fine. If anyone tries anything, I’m a pretty good bodyguard.”

Even though the calendar says it’s spring, the weather is cold enough that the playground is mostly abandoned. This is a relief, because every adult at the playground definitely knows who he is, and they’re all definitely glaring at him. Leslie wanders around the playground for a while, and Ben follows her at a brief distance, not saying anything. He can’t tell if she’s ignoring the hostility or if she just hasn’t picked up on it.

Eventually, she spies some empty swings.

“Let’s go,” she says suddenly, darting towards the swings, and of course she doesn’t just want to sit on them; she actually starts swinging. Ben collapses on the other swing and watches her go back and forth, higher and higher. Eventually she stops pumping, lets her momentum peter out, and drags the heels of her sneakers into the ground.

He still can’t think of anything to say.

“My hands are freezing,” she says, abruptly, and she pulls them into the cuffs of her sweatshirt. “Aren’t you cold?”

“No. I’m used to it.” The cold feels appropriate right now, anyway. It would be wrong for him to be warm.

“Ben,” she says, and her voice is a little unsteady, “I know everything is awful for you right now, and it’s probably really weird that I’m here, but—but you’re not mad at me for coming, are you?”

“I got in the car with you, didn’t I?” he says, and immediately realizes that this makes him sound like an asshole. He sighs and runs one hand through his hair. “Sorry. No. It is kind of weird, but…”

“But what?” she demands in a very familiar tone of voice, and Ben has a tiny flashback to four years ago, and the night they’d sat on the bleachers under the light that never shut off. He remembers how shitty he’d felt back then, remembers all his horrible insecurities, how he’d had to talk himself into not being embarrassed about his glasses and his braces and his body and just everything. And he remembers how Leslie hadn’t cared about any of that, that she’d only seen good things, and she’d just liked him anyway.

And this situation is clearly a thousand times worse (or more—there is really no comparison between going through an awkward phase and ruining an entire town), but that just makes her a thousand times (or more) more amazing, doesn’t it, if she’s going to lie to her mother and drive all this way just to…to take him to a park? Of all the people in the entire world, Ben thinks, no one is more likely to be on his side at a time like this, when he absolutely doesn’t deserve it, than Leslie. He isn’t sure how he knows that, but he does, and if there’s a single thought that might make him feel even one iota better right now…

“Honestly,” he says, and he can hear the quaver in his voice, “I can’t think of _anyone_ I’d rather have here right now.”

Leslie’s reflexes might actually have gotten faster in the last four years, because before Ben can even blink, she’s on her feet and hugging him fiercely. It doesn’t really work very well—he’s still sitting on the swing, and the angles are all wrong—but he appreciates it all the same, and he wraps his arms around her as best he can, and tries not to cry.

“You’re really skinny,” she says, after a few moments.

“I know. I haven’t exactly been eating.”

“Sorry,” she says, releasing him. “I probably sound like your mom.”

He shrugs. “She hasn’t said much since all of this started.”

“Do you need to call her?” Leslie asks, suddenly. “I don’t want her to think you got kidnapped or something.”

“No. I doubt anyone cares where I am right now.”

She swats him on the shoulder. “Of course they care. Don’t be stupid.”

“Leslie,” he says, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you really have no idea how bad it’s been.”

She bites her lip. “No, I don’t,” she says, eventually. “But you always think things are worse than they actually are.”

“And you always think things are better. I got _impeached_ today.” Ben instantly wishes he hadn’t said that word; it makes everything go from feeling sort of numb and hollow to feeling like there’s a knife in his chest and someone’s twisting it, and damn it, he’s about to start crying in public.

“Come on, let’s go back to the car,” Leslie says, reassuringly. “I’m really cold anyway.” Ben nods, mutely. She takes his hand (and she’s not kidding, her fingers are freezing), and they head back to the parking lot amidst glares from all the parents pushing strollers. Leslie starts the engine and cranks up the heat, and they start driving back to Partridge.

“So how is Ann?” Ben asks after a few minutes, because he feels like he should say _something_ , and because he needs to be thinking about something, anything, other than _that_.

“She’s fine,” Leslie says. “She keeps breaking up with Andy and then getting back together with him. I don’t really get it.” She sighs. “Andy’s fine too, by the way. He said to tell you hi, and that his band is awesome.”

Of course Andy has a band. “Are they objectively awesome, or does he just think they are?”

“I’m not sure,” says Leslie. “They’re loud. There’s a tape in the door pocket.” She points at his side of the car, and Ben pulls out a homemade cassette labeled “Teddy Bear Suicide.”

“So are they grunge, or more like Nine Inch Nails?” It has to be one or the other with a name like that, right? He puts in the tape.

“I think they’re just loud,” says Leslie. After a couple of songs, which sound very much like they were recorded in someone’s garage with a crappy toy microphone while the garage door went up and down, Ben is inclined to agree. He turns the stereo off.

They drive in silence for a little while longer.

“Where are you staying? At the Value Suites?”

“How’d you know?” she asks.

“It’s the only motel in a thirty-mile radius.”

“This really is a small town,” she mutters. “You know how to get there from here, right?”

“Yeah. Just go back the way we came for now.” He stares vacantly out the window for a while, hoping Leslie doesn’t suddenly ask for directions to his house, because he has zero desire to go back there, like, ever.

She doesn’t ask, of course. She just follows his directions to the Value Suites, parks in the back of the building, and leads him up to room 214. Somehow, Ben is not surprised when the room turns out to be full of way too many suitcases, and about a dozen binders, and a stack of _Cosmopolitan_ magazines that he assumes belong to Ann.

The shower’s running and Ann is nowhere to be seen, so Leslie pokes her head in the bathroom and yells for Ann not to come out naked or anything. Then she makes Ben call his parents, like literally shoves him onto one of the beds and then holds the phone to his ear and says “Ben, call. Call. Call, Ben, call. Call, call, call,” until he gives up and dials the number.

Jess answers. “Hello?”

“Hey,” he says, quietly. “It’s me. Don’t hang up.”

“Where _are_ you?” she demands. “Mom? It’s Ben.”

He can hear his mother shout something in the background, but he can’t make out what it is.

“I’m with friends. I’m okay.”

“Mom’s coming.”

“Just tell her I’m fine,” he says, quickly. He really doesn’t want to talk to his mother right now. “And—and I’m sorry, okay?” He hangs up before Jess can say anything else.

“Is everything all right?” Leslie asks, and he understands why she sounds worried, but god, he doesn’t want to go there right now.

“Fine,” he says. They both know he’s lying, but Leslie doesn’t pursue it. Instead, she opens a drawer under the phone and pulls out a couple of takeout menus, which she throws at him.

“Which one?” she asks.

He shrugs without looking at the menus. “I don’t care. I’m really not hungry.” Leslie rolls her eyes at him and starts looking through the menus herself.

“You have to eat,” says Ann, emerging from the bathroom in a t-shirt and sweatpants, with a towel wrapped around her head. “We all do. Real food, not more s’mores. Hi, Ben.”

“Hi,” he says. “Sorry you got dragged into this.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I like road trips.” She plops down on the other bed. “How are you doing?”

“Um,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Do you have to ask?”

Ann shrugs, and shoots him a half-smile. “Probably not.”

“What the hell?” says Leslie, suddenly, sounding absolutely disgusted. “Ben, what’s wrong with this pizza place? Why does it only serve calzones? Never mind. We’re getting Chinese.”

But they’re not, because the Chinese place closed two years ago.

It takes half an hour to get Leslie to agree to actually order calzones, even though there really are no other options since nowhere else in Partridge delivers. Thankfully, even in her outrage, she agrees that they shouldn’t try to go anywhere tonight. It’s getting dark, and she and Ann don’t know where anything is (Leslie has maps of Minnesota, of course, but Partridge is so small that it’s only a dot on the state route; none of the local streets are listed) and Ben shouldn’t be showing his face anywhere.

Somehow, though, Ben finds it strangely reassuring to watch her freak out about nothing, and to watch Ann try to calm her down. He plays idly with the end of his necktie, relieved that at least _some_ things haven’t changed much in the last four years. Wait, why is he still wearing this stupid necktie? He’s pretty sure that if he tried to strangle himself right now, Leslie would come running over with a pair of scissors or a machete or whatever, and cut him down.

He takes off the necktie. By the time the calzones arrive, he’s hungry for the first time all month—or maybe not hungry, exactly, but at least he feels like he might be capable of eating.

He only makes it through about a quarter of a calzone before the nausea comes back.

Ann turns on the TV and flips through the channels for a while and _Meatballs_ is on, of all things. She apparently finds this hilarious, because she refuses to change the channel, so Leslie turns her frustration at the calzones into frustration at the fact that this movie exists outside of summer camp. After a few minutes, she and Ann are both yelling at the TV, alternately swearing at Jerry and reciting dialogue along with the characters, and everything almost feels normal. Well, not that Ben ever expected that he’d be watching _Meatballs_ with Leslie and Ann again, but he almost feels like his life might be okay again at some point.

Almost. Not quite. Because it’s not okay. Nothing is okay.

After the movie ends, Ann goes down to the pay phone in the lobby to call her mother and Andy. Leslie throws out all the trash from dinner, then looks back at him on the bed and does a double-take.

“You’re still wearing your nice clothes,” she says.

“What else would I be wearing?” he asks, because seriously, did she expect him to take an overnight bag to his impeachment?

“Oh,” says Leslie, and she looks a little embarrassed. “Well, I thought you might not want to go home tonight, so I packed you a bag just in case.” She runs over to the closet area and pulls out a small suitcase. “Here,” she says, hoisting it onto the bed. She sits on the edge of the bed and unzips the top, then starts pulling stuff out and handing it to him. “Toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and I’m not really sure how these things work, but I got you a travel kit for contact lenses, with eye drops and stuff. I hope it’s okay.”

“Leslie…” he says, trailing off. What on earth could he possibly say? “Is Ann okay with this?”

“Yeah, of course. You take this bed and we’ll share the other one. We’ve already discussed it.” She hands him a bundle of fabric.

“You got me _pajamas_?” He looks a little more closely. “Star Wars pajamas?” He didn’t know those existed in adult sizes.

“I hope they fit,” she says. “They might be a little big. I had to guess on the size, obviously.”

Somehow, this particular speechlessness is different than just being tongue-tied, different than all those times that he wanted to say something and wished he could use words like a normal person. This time there just _aren’t_ any words. He could be fucking _Shakespeare_ and he still wouldn’t be able to find the right words for this, for telling Leslie how completely amazing she is, for telling her that he doesn’t know what he did to deserve having her in his life at _all_ , ever, let alone _now_ , or for telling her that he _doesn’t_ deserve to have her in his life, and she should probably run away before he somehow ruins everything for her too.

Those words don’t exist.

So he just sits there, holding the Star Wars pajamas, staring at her.

“If you don’t like them, it’s okay. I kept the receipt,” she says, eventually.

“Leslie,” he says, desperately, because she seriously needs to understand how things actually are, “you know you can’t fix this, right? You can’t fix _me_.”

“You don’t need to be fixed.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that I do.”

She shakes her head, firmly. “Nope.”

“How do you _know_? You don’t. You don’t know.”

“Yeah, I do,” she says. “I don’t know _how_ I know, but I do. You should trust me.”

Well…of course he trusts her. She’s wrong, and he’s absolutely certain of that, but how could he not trust her? So he takes out his contacts (the travel kit is perfect, of course) and goes into the bathroom to change.

The pajamas are enormous, like Leslie took Andy shopping, held all the sizes up against him, and then picked a size larger just to be safe. (It turns out that this is _exactly_ what she did.) The pants are so big that he can barely walk without them falling off, and on top of that, they’re covered in little Darth Vader helmets. They are a really stupid pair of pajamas. Ann laughs at them when she returns from her phone calls.

But they’re not his terrible suit. And Leslie picked them out for him, and she fucking _drove them to Minnesota_ , so.

She puts on her own ridiculous pajamas, covered in owls, and produces a bag of marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey bars from somewhere. Then she sits in his bed instead of Ann’s for some reason, insisting that s’mores will help. (“S’mores help anything,” she says, repeatedly.) She even brought a cigarette lighter and some kebob sticks so that she can toast the marshmallows.

Ben still can’t bring himself to eat more than a bite of anything, not even s’mores. But he does hold the lighter for her.

Ann falls asleep just before the end of _Law & Order_, clutching the remote control. Ben isn’t really paying attention to the TV, and Leslie is totally engrossed in her marshmallows, so when the Minneapolis news begins and his voice suddenly comes over the speakers, muttering “No comment,” they both jump. Leslie instantly springs to her feet and grabs the remote from Ann, but it’s too late, the story’s already started.

“Leave it,” Ben says, and she shoots him a funny look as she slides back into the bed. But he needs to know. If he’s going to be the lead news story, he needs to see it.

It’s excruciating. It’s absolutely excruciating. Worse than he could ever have imagined. And the most awful thing about it is that the story isn’t even unfair; it doesn’t say anything that isn’t true.

Even Leslie can’t seem to think of anything to say.

But she doesn’t flinch or look away from the screen, and when he finally can’t control himself anymore, she just wraps her arm around his back, pulls his head onto her shoulder, and lets him cry until everything is empty.

***

So Ann was wrong (of course she was; what does Ann really know about boys? Not that this is about boys, it isn’t at all, it’s about being a good friend) and Leslie almost, almost wishes that Ann hadn’t been not just wrong, but painfully, dreadfully wrong. Because Ann had started the week by insisting that even if Leslie _has_ been keeping in touch with Ben for the last four years, sort of, there was no point in driving all the way to Minnesota, that Ben wouldn’t want to see her, that it would be weird. “He didn’t even tell you he was running for mayor,” Ann had pointed out. “Also, an impeachment and campus tours? Don’t you want to do something more fun for spring break?”

Well, okay. It’s definitely a little weird. But for one thing, campus tours are super fun, and for another, there’s a lot that Ann doesn’t know. For instance, she doesn’t know that in ninth grade, Todd’s mom broke up with Leslie for him because she wouldn’t stop talking about Ben.

Actually, Ann has no idea that all of the guys Leslie’s dated—and there have kind of been a lot, because Ann keeps setting Leslie up and nothing has really lasted longer than a week—have pretty much instantly revealed themselves to be Not as Good as Ben in one way or another. Leslie wouldn’t even really call it dating. A waste of her time is what she would call it. And even though _they_ all break up with _her_ and not the other way around, she never finds it very upsetting. She has better things to do than worry about boys, like schoolwork and all her extracurricular activities, which are much more interesting anyway.

Dave had been a little bit different, she supposes. He was nice, and he tried really hard to be a good boyfriend (and really he was a pretty good boyfriend, not great but really pretty good). But then his dad got assigned to a different military base, and they moved to San Diego. They’ve been gone for nine months now and she was only upset about him leaving for the first couple of weeks. She hasn’t felt any desire to keep in touch with him, either. So she’s back to going on two dates with, and subsequently being dumped by, every single one of Ann’s guy friends.

“You’ve got to stop being so intense, Leslie,” Ann keeps saying, but Leslie doesn’t even know what that means. Is she supposed to stop doing so many different things? That isn’t going to happen. It’s not her fault if no one’s even going to try keeping up with her.

“Well, what about Justin?” is her usual response, because of all of Ann’s friends, she thinks she would like Justin the most—he has career goals other than “whatever” or “band,” and he knows how to shower. He’s also way more attractive than most of Ann’s friends. Even Ann agrees on that point, that Justin is extremely attractive.

“Justin’s all wrong for you,” Ann keeps insisting, although she’s never been able to explain exactly why. “I can’t see you guys together. What about Todd?”

“He already dumped me.”

“That was years ago. Maybe you should reevaluate. There’s nothing wrong with trying something a second time.”

After the fourth time they have this conversation on the drive to Minnesota, Leslie is ready to scream.

Actually, she thinks Ann is the one who should reevaluate. Ann keeps going back to Andy, and Leslie likes Andy just fine but she thought Ann dumped him for being immature when they were thirteen. She can’t see any indication that Andy is even the slightest bit more mature now. His clothes are still covered in mashed potatoes a lot of the time; it’s just that everyone stopped remarking on it once grunge became a thing. Ann deserves more than that, she thinks. (Also Ann needs to start washing her hair more often and stop wearing those Doc Martens all the time and she needs to get some jeans without holes in the knees. She’s way too beautiful to be dressing like Courtney Love.)

And if she’s being honest with herself, her summer camp experience is increasingly hazy and she’s pretty sure that she’s idealizing it. Of course she doesn’t have feelings for Ben anymore. It’s been four whole years, almost, and they hadn’t been keeping in very close touch lately. He never sent pictures, so she didn’t even know what he looked like anymore until the articles started appearing. (Cuter, she thinks, but with worse taste in shirts. The plaid was better.)

And she knows, logically, that’s it’s ridiculous to compare all of her relationships to a summer camp fling.

Leslie isn’t always very logical, though.

Another thing that Ann doesn’t know about is the shoebox in the back of Leslie’s closet, the one neatly labeled “Minnesota trip,” with a little picture of Minnesota on it, where she’s been stashing away money for years, just in case. There is more than enough in that shoebox to pay for gas and food and motels and pajamas and Golden Gophers sweatshirts. The shoebox is probably pretty illogical. The fact that she keeps that papier-mâché light saber next to the shoebox is definitely pretty illogical.

But the important thing is that Ann _was_ wrong, which Leslie knew the instant she saw Ben fighting his way out of City Hall.

She knows it even more first thing the next morning, when the motel owner kicks them out because the calzone delivery guy saw Ben in their motel room last night and told the front desk staff that they were harboring Partridge’s most hated citizen. It takes a while to pack everything, but they’re out of the Value Suites by 8:30.

Ben’s house is less than twenty minutes from the motel, and during that twenty-minute drive, her car gets hit by three rounds of eggs, a pile of coffee grounds, and a dirty diaper, even though Ben is slouched in the back seat and it’s almost impossible to see him.

“This place is even worse than Eagleton,” she says, and Ann agrees. And Ann hasn’t even seen most of the town. Leslie saw a bunch of it yesterday, on her way to City Hall, and something just seems wrong, although she can’t quite put her finger on what that is. Maybe it's the calzones. Maybe it's that she drove all over the downtown area (if you could call it that) and didn't see a single park.

So really, it’s a good thing she has a plan.

Part one of the plan was supposed to be sneaking into the Wyatts’ house, but that’s a wash. There are a handful of reporters and two cop cars parked outside. The cops shield them from the reporters, but they also shine flashlights through all of Leslie’s car windows (which makes no sense, it’s light out) and demand to see Ben’s ID before they’ll let her pull into the driveway.

Then a dog starts barking loudly from inside the house. “Sebastian,” Ben mutters, fumbling with and subsequently dropping his keys. Eventually he manages to unlock the front door. “Shut up, Sebastian.”

“Wow, that dog’s huge,” says Ann, a little nervously. Sebastian barks once more, then lifts his leg and pees on Ben’s suit pants.

“Ben?” says a voice from somewhere else in the house. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he calls. “Well, I guess I’ll go change.” He points down a hall to the left. “The kitchen is over there.” Mrs. Wyatt emerges from the direction he’s pointing, wearing a faded plaid bathrobe and carrying a coffee mug. “No, Mom, don’t walk there—the dog.”

“Did he pee on the floor again?” sighs Mrs. Wyatt. She looks exhausted, like she didn’t sleep at all last night, and she doesn’t seem to notice that Leslie and Ann are on the front stoop.

“Not exactly. He peed on me.”

“Hi, Mrs. Wyatt,” says Leslie, tentatively, and she gives a little wave.

“Uh, you remember Leslie, right?” says Ben, anxiously. “And Ann.”

“Of course,” says Mrs. Wyatt. “What are you doing here?” But she doesn’t seem to need an answer, because she’s suddenly hugging both Leslie and Ann at the same time. A splash of coffee joins the dog pee. “I’m so glad you came,” she says, softly, and when she pulls back, Leslie sees a tear running down her face, which she quickly wipes away with the sleeve of her robe. “You two come into the kitchen. Sit. I’ll deal with the dog.” She leads them inside the house and over to the kitchen table, then grabs a handful of paper towels and goes back into the foyer.

“So now what?” asks Ann, staring at the walls. They are not covered in plaid wallpaper. Leslie finds this a little disappointing.

“Now we work on an exit strategy,” Leslie says.

“We’re packed,” Ann points out. “I think the strategy is that we get in the car and leave, Leslie.”

“Not for _us_ ,” she says. “For Ben.” Ann just stares blankly at her for a minute. “Well, we can’t leave him here. This town is awful, in case you haven’t noticed. No one should live here.”

“Leslie. Where are we going to take him?”

“Pawnee, of course.”

“And then what?” Ann asks. “Is he going to live on your couch? Your mom is going to love that idea.”

“Okay, okay,” Leslie says. “I haven’t exactly worked out all the details yet. But you didn’t see the news report last night, Ann. It was horrible. He can’t stay.”

Ben enters the kitchen, wearing the t-shirt Leslie got him for his fifteenth birthday, a Kurt Cobain-style cardigan (oh please don’t let him be going through a grunge phase too, Leslie thinks), and glasses instead of contacts. He goes straight to the pantry and pulls out a box of Bisquick, then gets a waffle iron from one of the cabinets. “I doubt we have whipped cream,” he says.

“That’s okay,” says Leslie. Ann shoots her a crazed look and mouths _He remembered about you and waffles?_ Good, Leslie thinks. Maybe now Ann will start to get it.

Mrs. Wyatt returns, washes her hands, and starts putting on a fresh pot of coffee. “I put the dog outside,” she says, to no one in particular. She looks around the kitchen. “Ben, do you want me to—”

“No,” he says, waving her off. “I’ll do it. You sit down.”

She doesn’t quite seem to be able to do that, though, or at least not until she’s set the table and poured Leslie and Ann orange juice. “Do you girls drink coffee yet?” she asks.

“I do,” says Ann.

“Leslie?”

“I doubt Leslie needs coffee,” says Ben, kind of automatically. She glances up. He _might_ almost be smiling at her.

“I tried it once,” she says. “And—”

“Oh, god,” groans Ann. “It was awful.”

“Let me guess,” says Ben, as he pours the first cup of batter into the waffle iron. “It tasted terrible, so you put half a cup of sugar in it. Then you probably chugged the entire thing, ran a marathon, and didn’t sleep for four days.”

Seriously, Leslie wonders, how does he just _know_ these things about her? Well, not that he’s entirely correct.

“Not exactly,” she says. “Sweetums Choco-luxe syrup and whipped cream. Then I chugged the entire thing, mowed the lawn, weeded the vegetable garden, and built four birdhouses. And I only didn’t sleep for _two_ days, so there.”

“Same difference,” he says, opening the fridge. “Bacon?”

They eat breakfast mostly in silence. (Well, she and Ann eat in silence. Ben is mostly just poking his waffle with a fork.) Partridge isn’t on spring break, so Jess is at school. It strikes Leslie how very weird this all is. Like, she knew the idea was a little bit nuts, but she didn’t anticipate how strange it would feel to be sitting in Ben’s kitchen under these circumstances.

Granted, she really couldn’t have anticipated these particular circumstances.

They clean up the kitchen in silence, too. Ann seems to be really uncomfortable. She keeps fidgeting.

“Okay,” Ben says, finally. “What’s your plan?” Now that there isn’t anything particular thing that needs doing, he seems more anxious. He keeps glancing at the window, even though the blinds are closed tightly and it’s impossible to tell whether the cops and reporters are still outside. Sebastian is still barking, though, so they probably are.

“Well,” Leslie says, slowly, “I don’t know. I mean I have a couple of ideas, but…” She thinks the atmosphere might get even more uncomfortable if she announces _I think you should come to Indiana with me_ in front of Mrs. Wyatt.

Yeah, she really shouldn’t say that.

Okay.

“What do you want to do?” she asks.

He just stares at her. “Go back in time about six months and keep this from happening in the first place.”

Okay.

“What do you want to do,” she asks, “that’s actually possible?”

He doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. Leslie looks helplessly at Ann, who shrugs. Crap. Ann is usually good at helping people. Maybe if Leslie just stares at her for a while…

Ann stands up. “Could I use the bathroom?”

“Second door on the right,” says Ben, pointing, and Ann bolts. Great.

After a suitably long pause, Leslie tries again. “You can’t just sit around all day being depressed.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

“Well,” she says, “I guess you _could_. But you shouldn’t.”

“Fine,” he snaps. “Then what’s your idea? Because that was mine.”

They both turn and stare at Mrs. Wyatt, who puts her hands flat on the table and shakes her head.

“I guess the first thing to figure out,” she says, to Leslie’s surprise, “is whether or not you want to stay in Partridge for the summer.”

“Great,” says Ben, banging his hand on the tabletop. “Thanks. So you want me to leave.”

“Of course I don’t want you to leave.”

“That’s not what you just said.”

She sighs. “I’m asking. It’s a question.”

“Yeah, well, it sounds like you’re kicking me out of the house,” he says, bitterly, and then he stomps out of the kitchen. A few seconds later, they hear a door slam shut, followed by Radiohead.

Leslie straightens her placemat, even though it was already straight, and Mrs. Wyatt sighs into her coffee cup. Please don’t let her start crying, Leslie thinks.

She doesn’t. She just looks even more exhausted. “This is not in any of the parenting handbooks,” she says. “I actually checked.” The coffee pot is empty, but she goes over to it and tries to pour another cup anyway, then shrugs, gives up, and sits down at the table again.

“Do you want me to make another pot?” asks Ann, finally returning from the bathroom. She starts making one without waiting for an answer.

“Do your parents know you’re here?” Mrs. Wyatt asks, suddenly.

“Yes,” Leslie assures her, and Ann raises her eyebrows. “Well, they know we’re in Minnesota. They don’t know exactly where in Minnesota we are.”

“We’re officially touring campuses on our spring break,” says Ann, and thankfully, she manages to say it without rolling her eyes.

“Call,” Mrs. Wyatt orders, sternly, pointing at the phone. “I want to talk to them.”

So that’s terrifying. Leslie calls her mother at work, explains a little, hands over the phone, and suddenly realizes she doesn’t want to hear this conversation.

“Leslie, where are you going?” Ann whispers loudly, but Leslie pretends not to hear her. She is seriously going to have to make this all up to Ann at some point, probably. How? Oh, she’ll agree to go to one of Andy’s shows. Er, “shows.” Leslie will agree to go see Andy’s band make noise in someone’s garage. More than once—she’ll go more than once. That should do it.

There’s the staircase. Leslie walks up it, slowly, trying to figure out what exactly she’s going to say. Somehow yesterday seemed easier, like she knew what she was going to do. Well, she had known, at the time. But maybe seeing the news story had changed something, or maybe today is just different now that everything has had a chance to sink in. Either way, she knew what to do for Sad Ben, but not what to do for…for what, Desperate Angry Ben?

Only one door in the upstairs hallway is shut. She pauses momentarily, then taps softly, wondering if he’s going to be able to hear her over “Creep,” which he’s been playing on repeat, and god, that’s such a cliché she can hardly even stand it.

“Go away, Mom.”

“It’s Leslie.”

The music stops, and a few seconds later, the door opens a fraction of an inch. Leslie decides to take this as an invitation to enter. Ben’s already stretched out on his bed again, ankles crossed, staring at the ceiling. His room looks almost exactly the same as it did in the picture she saw four years ago, except there are more posters on the wall now. Plaid curtains, plaid bedspread. And his desk is a tiny bit messier, but only a tiny bit. Like, there’s one pen out of place, and a pile of unopened envelopes is scattered across one side.

“God, you’re such a neat freak,” she says. It’s actually kind of unnerving, especially when she thinks about the state of her own bedroom.

He presses play on the CD player, but turns the volume down considerably and takes the CD off of repeat (thank god). And he still doesn’t say anything.

Well, now what should she do? She’s not even really sure why she came upstairs, other than to get away from Mrs. Wyatt’s end of the phone conversation. And there’s only so long she can stand in the middle of the bedroom looking at things.

The obvious thing to do would be to sit in the desk chair, but instead, she plops down on the edge of the bed and just looks at Ben.

“So,” he says.

“I think you should come back to Indiana with me,” she says, baldly, and she was expecting him to look surprised, or something, but he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t react at all. That’s kind of unnerving. She starts talking faster. “There would be some details to work out, but it wouldn’t be that hard to find you a place to live or a job or whatever, just until the fall, when college starts. I think you’d really like Pawnee. Or—or we could take you to your aunt’s house, if you’d rather go to Muncie.”

Still no reaction.

“But Pawnee is great, and—and it would be a chance to start over, kind of. No one would know who you are, and you already have friends there and…”

He still isn’t talking, or moving. Maybe he’s in a fugue state? That would be bad.

“Friends,” he scoffs, and thank god, he’s not in a fugue state.

“Well, I know you haven’t really talked to them or anything, but trust me, Andy hasn’t changed at _all_.”

“You know,” he says, like he wasn’t really listening, “not a single one of my supposed friends has spoken to me for over a month.”

“Well, that sucks.”

“Leslie, everything sucks.”

He still sounds desperate and angry. Damn it.

“Except me, right?” she asks hopefully, raising her eyebrows at him. She wishes he was sitting up so that she could nudge him in the ribs, but he isn’t, so she settles for nudging him on the leg. That was weird, she thinks. He sort of tries to smile, though.

“Except you. You are amazing.” He pauses. “And Ann.”

Even though Leslie really shouldn’t be thinking about that sort of thing right now, because this is really not the time, she can’t help but notice—well, okay. He is, after all, the first guy she ever had a crush on, and he did just call her amazing, and how exactly is she supposed to stop herself from noticing that he’s somehow gotten even better-looking over the last four years?

Leslie glances around the room again, trying to get herself to focus a bit more, and her eye falls on one of the unopened envelopes on his desk. It’s thick, and it’s from the University of Minnesota.

“Where are you going in the fall, anyway?” she asks, jerking her head at the letter.

“I don’t know,” he says, blankly. “I wasn’t going to.”

“What do you mean, you weren’t going to?”

“Well, I mean, I applied to a bunch of places, obviously, but I was going to stay here and, you know…” He trails off, and sits up, finally. “There’s a community college about three towns over, so I was going to do that.”

“So you never even opened the envelopes?” she asks, glancing back at the desk. That’s a dumb question; he obviously didn’t.

“Nope.”

“Well, you should open them. Let’s open them.”

“Leslie…” he groans.

“What?”

“Can’t I at least have the morning to sit around being depressed?”

“No!” she shrieks. She lunges as fast as she can (which is pretty darn fast; Leslie prides herself on her reflexes), grabs his pillow, and hits him with it.

It takes a few minutes of cajoling, and she has to rip the CD player’s power cord out of the wall, but she finally manages to get Ben out of bed. She piles up all the envelopes and hands them to him, and he looks kind of bewildered, but he doesn’t fight her.

“Your mother says you have to be home in the next three days or else,” says Mrs. Wyatt, when Leslie shoves a reluctant Ben into the living room. She and Ann are on the (plaid) couch, watching _Jerry Springer_.

“And what else?” she asks, nervously.

“Apparently the rest of it can wait until you get home.”

“Oh, boy,” Leslie mutters. She is not looking forward to that conversation. But. Not important now.

“Um,” Ben says to his mother, “did anyone tell you yet that they sort of need to stay here? I got them kicked out of the Value Suites.”

“No, but I assumed they were staying here anyway. What did you do?”

“The calzone delivery guy saw me. I'm unwelcome.”

Leslie spends the rest of the morning watching talk shows with Ann (ugh, they’re awful), while Ben and his mother go through all the acceptance letters—and they are _all_ acceptance letters. Leslie is impressed, and says so, and Ben wryly points out that having won a local election is a moderately impressive extracurricular activity, especially if you've graduated early.

“I can’t believe you didn’t at least open these,” scolds his mother. “You have to make a decision by the end of next week on most of them.”

“Whatever,” he mutters. “Can I go back to being depressed now?”

“No!” yells Leslie from the couch, which earns her a dirty look from Ann, who is actually paying attention to the crap on TV for some reason. But damn it, she didn’t come here just to let him be depressed. So she drags him to the kitchen and makes him assemble sandwiches.

There’s still the problem of what to do after lunch, though. They are definitely stuck in the house (damn cops and reporters) and even if they weren’t and assuming Ben could show his face in public, she has the feeling that there is nothing to do in Partridge.

Not that Ben’s her boyfriend anymore, but he did used to be, and what’s the thing you’re supposed to do when you go to your boyfriend’s house for the first time?

“Hey,” she says, brightly, “can I see your baby pictures?”

“Nothing would make me happier,” says Mrs. Wyatt, at the same time that Ben says “Is my life not miserable enough right now?”

But there’s no reason for Ben to be miserable about this, of course, because Leslie thinks that he was possibly the cutest child who ever existed. Except for her, of course. _She_ had pigtails, and really, you can’t beat pigtails.

Jess arrives home from school and is surprisingly unfazed to see Leslie and Ann in her living room, all things considered. Then she yells at Ben for ruining her life, stomps upstairs, and starts blasting the _Sister Act 2_ soundtrack.

They let Sebastian back into the house, and he immediately falls in love with Ann and refuses to leave her alone. He goes back outside.

Mr. Wyatt arrives home late, after dinner, and acts like nothing is out of the ordinary at all, like it’s totally normal to have cop cars and reporters outside the front door, and two spare teenage girls sleeping in the guest bedroom. He seems nice enough, but Ben gets more on edge as soon as he walks in the door.

Ann falls asleep easily enough, but Leslie is just tossing and turning, and after the third time she wakes Ann up, Ann orders her to go sit on the couch or something until she can stop shaking the bed around.

She doesn’t, of course. Ben’s light is on, and his door is cracked open.

“Hey,” she whispers. “Are you still awake?”

When he lets her in, she giggles.

“I know. My pajamas are plaid.”

She sits Wamapoke-style on the bed—no, she corrects herself, cross-legged; they’re not supposed to say Wamapoke-style anymore—and waits for Ben to sit next to her. But he flops into his desk chair instead.

“I tried calling Steve tonight, while you and Ann were bringing your stuff in,” he says. “And he hung up on me.”

“Asshole,” Leslie mutters.

He shrugs. “It’s to be expected.”

“What is wrong with this town?” she asks, fighting to keep her voice down. “It’s not like you wanted any of this to happen. Why are all the people here jerks?”

“You can’t blame them for hating me,” he says. “I did blow the entire budget.”

“Yeah, but you were trying to do something awesome,” she says. “They should appreciate that.”

He just shakes his head, and stares at her like she’s some crazy bird in the zoo.

“Can we,” he says, deliberately, “can we talk about something else? Anything else.”

“We could,” she agrees. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. You. You haven’t told me anything about what you’ve been up to since you stopped writing me twice a month.”

So she tells Ben everything she can think of from the past four years, about school and her extracurricular activities, about how Todd dumped her because she wouldn’t stop talking about him, about all the times Ann’s tried to set her up, about Andy having his driver’s license for exactly one week before he somehow crashed his car into nothing and broke his ribs in the process, about how Ron works at City Hall now, in the Parks department, and she goes to visit him sometimes when she goes to her mom's office, because she knows he finds it so annoying. She tells him about Dave, too, which somehow feels weirder than telling him about Todd or the parade of Ann’s loser friends, and she tells him about Lindsay’s nose job in more detail, and that she’d lost a bunch of weight last year and suddenly gotten popular, and Mark Brendanawicz had asked her to prom and she’d laughed in his face.

“So she’s not awful anymore?” he asks.

“Oh, no, she’s worse than ever. She’s insufferable now. I want to punch her in the face every time I see her.”

There’s a long silence.

“ _If_ I came back to Pawnee with you,” Ben says, “then what?”

Instantly, Leslie feels a giant grin spreading across her face. “That would be so awesome.”

“Could you maybe be more specific?" he asks. "Like, could I get a job for the summer? Where would I live? How expensive is rent?”

“Rent’s pretty cheap,” she says. “Super cheap, if you can stand living near the raccoons. You wouldn’t want to do that, though.”

“Pawnee still hasn’t fixed its raccoon problem?”

“Um, no. Not even close. I doubt we ever will, to be honest. But we kind of have an agreement with them now. They have their part of the town, and we have ours.”

“Good lord,” he says. “How do you negotiate with a raccoon?”

It seems like an encouraging question.


	11. Epilogue, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...and then a bunch of other stuff happens too

Those damned cops are still outside the house when Leslie finally leaves Ben's bedroom at four in the morning. He’s pretty much already figured out his best course of action anyway, but the fact that the cops are still there kind of cements his decision.

Because Leslie is right, as usual. What exactly does he have keeping him here? It really does seem like his options are either to lock himself in his bedroom until the end of August, or go to Indiana for a few months. Honestly, locking himself in his bedroom has a certain appeal to it, but he knew it wasn’t really the best idea even before Leslie spent the hour between 1:30 and 2:30 writing out extensive pro-con lists for both scenarios.

It’s still kind of a terrifying decision. But he keeps shaking every time he thinks about what it would be like to stay in Partridge for the rest of the summer, and he definitely doesn’t want to spend the entire summer shaking.

The hardest part is telling his parents. Since his dad has started going to work ridiculously early and coming home ridiculously late, he just stays up for the rest of the night (well, it’s not like he’s been able to sleep much lately anyway) and confronts them first thing, at the kitchen table. It’s still dark outside. He hasn’t slept a wink. The cops have their blue flashing lights on, for whatever reason, and a pulsing blue light is flickering through the blinds. The cumulative effect makes him really anxious. Great. Like this conversation wasn’t going to be bad enough anyway.

“I don’t think I want to stay here,” he says.

Silence.

“So you’re going to run away from your problems?” asks his father.

“No, it’s…” Damn it, that’s exactly the reaction he was hoping he wouldn’t get. The morning paper is on the table, and it’s folded, but Ben can read a few words in the headline. _Ice Clown Keeps Head Down…_ God, would he like to set the headline writer on fire right about now.

After an incredibly long and uncomfortable silence, he mutters, “I’d be leaving for college in the fall anyway, now. This just…moves it up by a few months.”

His parents look at each other briefly. Then his dad shrugs and says “Fine,” and goes back to his coffee and newspaper. Ten minutes later, he leaves for work without having said another word.

“Yesterday, when I asked if you wanted to stay,” says his mother, slowly, once they’re alone, “my thought was that you would go live with your grandparents. But that isn’t what you have in mind, is it?”

“No,” he admits, and then adds, lamely, “St. Paul doesn’t seem far enough away.”

“I should probably be a responsible parent and ask what’s going on between you and Leslie.”

Oh. That question is actually a little surprising, somehow. Something about the whole prolonged failure and public humiliation thing has pretty well erased all thoughts of girls from his mind. Hell, Leslie had been in his bed for most of the night, and it’s just now occurring to him how that might be interpreted…

“Nothing,” he says, honestly. “Nothing is going on.”

“So if we let you go to Indiana with her,” she says, bluntly, “I’m not going to get a phone call in a month telling me I’m going to be a grandmother?”

“ _Mom_ ,” he chokes out. He has the curious sensation that he’s just turned completely purple. “I—what the hell—you don’t—”

“I have to ask. Weren’t there two pregnancies at your high school this year?” she asks.

“Three,” he sputters, “but still—Mom— _I_ didn’t—I haven’t—good _lord_.”

He hears a snort behind him, and oh shit, that isn’t Leslie is it? No, it’s Jess, which is probably nearly as bad.

“Please,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure Leslie would prefer a boyfriend who didn’t ruin people’s lives.”

“Your brother did not ruin your life,” says his mother, automatically, and Ben feels that stab in his chest again. He wishes saying “Ben didn’t ruin your life” hadn’t become a reflex for her. He wishes he could _believe_ that he didn’t ruin anyone’s life.

“Whatever,” Jess mutters, and she glares at him.

“I’m going back to bed,” Ben says, trying not to glare back.

Not that Leslie is going to let him sleep for very long. Of course she isn’t.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she yells, banging on his door. “It’s past eleven. Why aren’t you up?”

“Because I only went to sleep about three and a half hours ago,” he groans, dragging himself out of bed and over to the door, which she opens before he can even get there. Her sleeves are rolled up and it looks like she’s tried to pull her hair back, even though it isn’t nearly long enough.

“Well, so did I, but we’re leaving tomorrow morning,” she announces. Seriously, she looks this awake on three hours’ sleep? “Come on. Get dressed. You have a ton of stuff to do before we go.”

“Did you drink coffee?” He has to ask. She’s actually bouncing up and down.

“Nope,” she says, cheerfully. “I’m just in a good mood.”

“Wait,” he says. “You said ‘we.’”

“Aren’t you coming?” Leslie asks, suddenly looking nervous. “Your mom said you were coming to Pawnee with us. You—you didn’t change your mind, did you?”

“No,” he says. The idea of moving hundreds of miles away for a few months with no real plan is terrifying, but if his parents are going to let him go, he wants to do it. “I don’t want to be here.”

Leslie hesitates for maybe half a second, and then hugs him, hard. Good lord, she’s strong. Ben thinks his ribs might break. “Okay, hurry up!” she chirps, and then she bolts down the hallway, leaving him staring after her and wishing, vaguely, that she hadn’t departed quite so quickly.

He showers and gets dressed, deliberately selecting a plaid shirt. God, he looks terrible. He hasn’t shaved since before the impeachment, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious how little he’s eaten or slept over the past month or so. Maybe he should try to grow a beard.

He ends up shaving before he goes downstairs.

There really is a lot to do. Leslie’s already done a lot of it, somehow. By the time he makes it into the kitchen, she’s already sorted all of his college materials into color-coded binders.

“I didn’t calculate the financial stuff,” she says, handing him a purple binder labeled _Northwestern_ and a maroon one labeled _Minnesota_. “That seemed weird.”

Ben starts by tossing the Minnesota binder off to the side. Well, all the binders for schools in Minnesota. He doesn’t want to go anywhere that he knows his classmates are going, not if he’s going to try and start over, or whatever the hell it is that he’s going to try and do. Thank goodness that most kids in Partridge aren’t particularly ambitious, or inclined to try to leave Minnesota. He never wants to see any of them again.

“Okay,” says his mother, sitting down at the table with a cup of coffee. “Let’s get to work on this.”

They spend the entire day sorting everything out, poring over financial aid documents and scholarship offers and bank accounts, and it really is immensely helpful to have all the paperwork neatly organized in binders already. There’s stuff to deal with on top of all the college crap too, stuff Ben’s never really thought about before, like insurance papers and finding his Social Security card.

At one point they have to leave the house, to go to the bank and set up student checking or something. One of the cop cars follows them, which is weird and unsettling and makes him have to work really hard not to twitch. Everyone at the bank is cordial, but barely, and when his mother lets it slip that Ben’s leaving in the morning, he hears a few distant cheers over that piped-in harp music they always play.

Great. Now he’s twitching uncontrollably.

“I should really go to the grocery store,” says his mother as they leave the bank, but she changes her mind when she sees how upset he is. Even though the cops are parked next to them, their car has been both egged and toilet papered. This is getting kind of ridiculous, Ben thinks; who toilet papers a car?

So they go home instead, after they’ve cleaned off the car. Ann, who’s apparently been going a little stir crazy, is more than happy to go to the grocery store, and bolts outside with Leslie’s keys and a long shopping list. The house kind of looks like a tornado hit it in the hour and a half they were gone. There are empty boxes everywhere (where did those even come from?), Ann’s baked three batches of cookies, and as soon as they walk in the door, Leslie emerges from the basement with a laundry basket full of clean clothes. Ben takes a deep breath and tries to stop freaking out.

“Please tell me you weren’t washing my underwear,” he mutters, but she just grins. Of course she was. He’s about to take the laundry basket from her, but she darts upstairs before he can get to it, insisting that she can carry it herself.

“So, I figured out our route for tomorrow,” she says, dumping his laundry onto the bed. Ben goes to his closet and pulls out a couple of suitcases—no need to put clothes away if he’s just going to pack them. “We need to leave super early, like around five,” Leslie continues. “And then—crap on a mackerel!”

“What?” asks Ben, confused.

“What _is_ that? Why is it in your closet? It looks evil.”

Oh, she’s spotted his ventriloquist’s dummy. “I’m not very good,” he admits, putting it on.

“No, don’t,” Leslie says, averting her eyes. “I’m going to pretend I don’t know this about you. Don’t pack that thing.”

So that’s weird. Not that he was going to pack it anyway. But still.

The rest of packing goes smoothly enough, though. They have Leslie’s car loaded up by mid-afternoon, and his car mostly loaded a couple of hours later.

“You seriously drive a station wagon?” asks Ann when he pulls it around from the back of the house, where they’ve been hiding it so it doesn’t get egged. It sounds like she’s trying not to laugh.

“Well, I didn’t pick it out,” Ben says. Better the old family station wagon than the old family minivan, he thinks. “I just…inherited it.”

“Andy is going to love this,” she says. “Be prepared to haul around amplifiers and stuff.”

Jess starts crying when she realizes he’s actually, seriously leaving in the morning and possibly never coming back. “I didn’t _really_ want you to go,” she sobs, “even if you did ruin my life.”

He thinks he might miss her a little bit.

Dinner is weird and uncomfortable, especially when his father arrives halfway through and sits down at the table without saying anything about all the preparations.

Is his father seriously just going to let him leave without saying _anything_? God damn it.

Finally he just bangs on the study door, although he has no idea what he’s trying to accomplish here.

“Come in.”

He doesn’t, though. He just opens the door. There’s his dad, sitting behind the desk, listening to the Twins game on the radio and working a crossword puzzle. He looks up, registers that Ben is standing there, and turns the volume down.

“You know I’m leaving tomorrow, right?” Ben asks.

“That’s what your mother said.”

Ben takes a deep breath and crosses the threshold.

“And?”

He closes the study door and leans against it, holding onto the doorknob for support. Then he sets his jaw and waits for it.

A good thirty seconds of silence follows.

“Well, then we’ll hope to see you at Christmas,” says his father, in a tone implying that it won’t be much of a loss if they don’t. And he gets to his feet, walks over to the door, and offers Ben a handshake.

A fucking handshake.

Ben locks himself in his bedroom for the rest of the night, and doesn’t open the door for anyone, not even Leslie.

God damn it. God _damn_ it. Was that seriously supposed to make him want to stay? Because it didn’t.

 _Christmas_? What, is he not invited home for Thanksgiving now?

And he doesn’t want to think about the next morning, doesn’t want to think about it even at 4:30 when his alarm goes off and it’s happening, doesn’t want to think about how he’s just ended up being not just a disappointment, but such a big disappointment that he has to leave the entire fucking state.

He unplugs the alarm clock and throws it in the last suitcase, on top of the Star Wars pajamas and the summer camp scrapbook. He goes into the backyard and says goodbye to the dog. Sebastian barks and lifts his leg, and Ben barely gets out of the way in time.

Someone puts a bowl of cereal in front of him, but he still can’t bring himself to eat anything, and just stares at the Cheerios for a while before he gives up and throws it down the garbage disposal.

“You know your father loves you,” says his mother, standing in the driveway. She’s not crying, exactly, just producing a lot of tears without seeming to notice. The fucking cops are still there. Jess is making faces at them now.

“Is he even going to wake up to say goodbye?” Ben asks.

He finally does, about five minutes before they leave, and this time Ben gets a stiff, uncomfortable hug and some slightly more sympathetic words. But things are different now, and when he looks his father in the eye and says a hollow “Thanks,” he sees some middle-aged, unshaven guy in bifocals and bedroom slippers instead of his dad.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Leslie murmurs. She’s preemptively stolen his keys—in case he has another breakdown, he supposes.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” He’s not fine.

“Okay,” says Leslie, uncertainly, and she gives him the keys. “Tell me if you’re not.”

There are a lot more words from everybody, mostly his mother, and now both she and Jess are crying, and Leslie’s crying a little too, and they’re all hugging each other. Ben knows he’s supposed to be sad, but all he can feel is a sort of dull throbbing.

He gets behind the wheel and starts the car, and for some reason he was assuming that Leslie was going to drive her own car, but she climbs into his passenger seat instead.

“I’m fine. Really,” he says, although he can’t bring himself to look at her while he’s saying it.

“I know,” she says. “It’s okay. Ann’s always grouchy at this hour. I don’t want to ride with her anyway.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” he tells her.

“Yeah, well, so are you,” she replies.

And they leave.

They’ve only gone a couple of miles when a half-eaten calzone comes out of nowhere and hits the drivers’ side window, and it surprises him so much that he almost crashes the car. Then he really isn’t okay enough to drive anymore, so they pull over, and Leslie takes the wheel.

“Assholes,” she mutters, and then she gives him a friendly punch on the arm. “You should take a nap.”

Ben obediently tilts the seat back and closes his eyes, although he’s pretty sure he won’t be able to sleep. But next thing he knows, the car is slowing down. He pops the seat back up. The sun is up now, and they’re pulling into a gas station.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“Just outside of Eau Claire,” she says. “Your tank’s almost empty.”

“I was out that long?” He can’t believe he slept through his exit from Minnesota.

“Like a baby,” she says, grinning at him. She hands him the keys. “You get to drive next.”

Leslie runs inside to use the restroom, and Ben starts pumping gas. Eau Claire is prettier than he remembers, although that’s a strange thing to think, considering that he’s standing at a gas station and looking at I-94.

For the next leg of the trip, Leslie moves back to her own car and Ann climbs into the passenger seat of his, carrying her backpack and an extremely tangled cord.

“I’m really fine by myself,” he says. This time it might actually be true.

“Don’t care,” she says, untangling the cord, which turns out to be one of those converter things that make a Discman play through the tape deck. “I drove all the way up here listening to Leslie’s music. I’m not listening to it again on the way back. She has _terrible_ taste.” She pops in _Vs._

They don’t talk for the first half of the album.

“Want a cookie?” Ann asks, pulling some of yesterday’s baking out of the backpack. “I have peanut butter and oatmeal raisin. Leslie kept all the chocolate chip ones in her car.”

“Yeah, okay. Peanut butter.” Ann hands him a cookie and takes one herself.

“There are a lot of cows in Wisconsin,” she observes.

“Look,” Ben says, although he isn’t sure where he’s going to go with this, “I really am sorry you got dragged into this mess. It must have been the worst spring break ever.”

“It was pretty weird,” Ann says. He keeps his eyes on the road, so he can't tell whether or not she’s studying him. It sure feels like she is. But she doesn’t say anything else.

After a long pause, Ben finally blurts out, “Why? Why did Leslie do this?”

“I don’t know. She still likes you, I guess.”

“Not—not like _that_ , though.” She couldn’t possibly.

“No, not like that. I don’t think so, anyway. She would’ve told me.”

“Why at all, though?” he wonders aloud. Even without all the recent failure and public humiliation, it’s been _four years_. Plus, on top of that, there’s all that recent failure and public humiliation. And yeah, she’s already demonstrated pretty effectively that she doesn’t care about that, but _why_? Why doesn’t she care?

He asks Ann, while Ann’s in the middle of biting into a second cookie. “Because she’s Leslie,” she says, with her mouth full, like that’s an answer.

Well. It is kind of an answer, isn’t it?

"Why are you asking me?" says Ann, suspiciously. "Do you still like her like that?"

"I—no—it isn't something I've thought about," he says, less honestly than when he denied it to his mother yesterday morning.

"Hmm," Ann replies. Ben's pretty sure she doesn't believe him.

They stop in Madison for lunch, even though it’s only ten in the morning.

“Nothing wrong with breakfast food for every meal,” Leslie says, cheerfully, sliding into the booth next to him. She doesn’t even open the menu, just orders waffles and a side of whipped cream when the waitress comes to take their drink orders.

Ann shakes her head. “I don’t understand why you don’t weigh five hundred pounds,” she says, and then, “Ben, you have to eat something this time.”

“Actually,” he says, “I am kind of hungry.”

“Good,” says Leslie. “You have to be able to stay on your feet for the campus tour.”

“What campus tour?” He looks around at all the Badger décor in the diner. “I didn’t apply to Wisconsin.”

“Northwestern. We’re stopping in Chicago. I tried to fit some of your other options into our itinerary, but they weren’t really on the way, so we’ll have to go on a weekend or something. Anyway, we have a reservation for 2:00, and we might not have time to eat again before then, depending on traffic.”

“Doesn’t your mom know this trip really isn’t about campus tours at this point?” he asks, and she blushes a little bit.

“Well, yeah. But you got in there, and we’re kind of driving by it anyway, so I thought…”

The diner turns out to have a surprisingly good Denver omelet. He manages to eat almost all of it.

It’s Ben’s turn not to drive next (Leslie has a chart of who is supposed to be driving which car when, and why is he not surprised by this), so he gives Leslie his keys and brushes Ann’s cookie crumbs off of the passenger seat before he gets in.

“Also,” she says, as they pull back onto the interstate, as though the conversation never ended, “I really do like going on campus tours. It’s like you get to imagine a different future for yourself every time, you know? Like, what would happen if I went here? What would my new friends be like? What kind of person would I end up being?”

“But you’re going to Indiana, right?” She would be the same person no matter where she went to college, he’s pretty sure of that.

“Oh, yeah. That’s really the only place I even considered seriously.”

He pulls out the Northwestern binder and starts studying it. They’re offering him a decent scholarship. Decent enough that it wouldn’t cost _too_ much more to go there than the U of M. Well, assuming that he’d be able to get through four years without screwing up too badly and losing the scholarship, which is conditional. Assuming that one of the conditions of the scholarship isn’t “not getting impeached.”

“Can you read in the car without getting carsick?” she asks. “I always get a headache.”

“Yeah. If I’m in the front seat I’m usually okay.”

“That’s weird,” she says, after a pause.

“That I can read in the car without getting sick?” He didn’t think it was that weird.

“No, it’s weird that we don’t know that sort of thing about each other. Isn’t it?”

“When would it have come up?” he asks. “It’s not like you’d write it in a Christmas card.”

“I guess not,” she agrees. “I just—I don’t know.” She falls silent for a while, and then says, “I really did miss you. Like, all the time, for the first year or so.”

“I missed you a lot too,” he says, without thinking about it—well, he doesn’t need to think about that; it’s definitely true.

And she smiles. The big smile, the one that just makes her whole face light up. The smile he got the night before last, he suddenly realizes, when he’d asked what would happen if he went back to Pawnee with her.

Oh, god.

Ben had kind of forgotten how pretty she was. _Is._ Even with that awful haircut.

She’s _so_ pretty. And more importantly, he thinks, flashing back over the past few days, she really is completely amazing.

He kind of wants to kiss her.

As Ann points out, halfway through the campus tour, if you feel like trying to reinvent yourself, there are definitely worse places to do it than a moderately sized school in a big city. As Leslie points out, Chicago isn’t _that_ far from southwest Indiana. And he likes the campus and the lake view, and it’s a good school, and…he thinks he could spend four years here and not be miserable about it.

Leslie keeps talking about pro-con lists (she already put a blank one in the back of the binder), but he has to make a decision within the next few days anyway, and something about this all seems pretty okay, somehow.

“And if you don’t like it, you can transfer,” says Ann, pragmatically.

He talks to whatever university people you’re supposed to talk to about these things, admissions officers or financial aid counselors or whatever they are. They get his mom on the phone and work through some more of the details, and he signs the forms and pays the deposit and it’s done, he’s made a decision. Then they go to the bookstore and buy Jess the purplest t-shirt they can find. Leslie finds a padded, t-shirt sized envelope in her trunk (apparently one of her suitcases is just for office supplies), and they make it to a post office right before closing.

Then of course they get stuck in rush hour traffic trying to leave Chicago, and it takes seven hours to get back to Pawnee instead of five, and Ben’s so exhausted by the time they arrive that he barely even bothers to wonder if he should be disturbed by the big sign reading _Pawnee: Home of the World-Famous Julia Roberts Lawsuit_.

“I wish you could stay at my house,” says Leslie, guiding the station wagon into a driveway, “but my mom said no before I could even ask. I think I might be grounded.”

He isn’t surprised. “So where are we?” But she doesn’t need to answer, because the garage door is already open and he can see Andy sitting on the stool of a drum kit, wearing plaid flannel, sobbing. As soon as Ann gets out of Leslie’s car, Andy leaps to his feet and buries his face in her shoulder.

It takes a little while to figure out that Andy is upset because he just found out about Kurt Cobain. Everyone’s shoulders are soggy by that point.

“But that happened two weeks ago,” Ben mutters to Leslie, while Ann pats Andy on the back. “Even I knew that.”

She shrugs, helplessly. “Well, you’re staying here for the time being. Andy’s got a zillion brothers and most of them only sort of live here? Or something? Anyway, there’s room and his parents are cool.”

The Dwyers’ basement is semi-furnished, and there’s a small window, and it’s fine, whatever. He’s too tired to care very much right now. He’s so tired that he actually does sleep, and without nightmares.

Since he’s more or less capable of feeding himself and doing his own laundry, and since no one really knows how many people live in the house anyway, the Dwyers seem perfectly happy for him to stay in the basement for as long as he wants. Plus, Andy’s brothers are all so enormous that Ben suspects he himself simply isn’t large enough to register in anyone’s vision. One morning he compulsively tidies the downstairs bathroom, and Andy’s mother breaks down in tears and offers to adopt him.

So he stays. And he’s immediately named Teddy Bear Suicide’s official roadie, thanks to his station wagon. Andy promises to give him an official t-shirt, when they can afford to get t-shirts made. Ben isn’t holding his breath on that one, though. It probably doesn’t matter very much. As far as he can tell, the band has never been asked to play anywhere.

“Told you about the car thing,” says Ann, with a smirk, a week later. She and Leslie came over after school for what Andy claims is a rehearsal, though Ben suspects it is actually some sort of psychological torture aimed at Andy’s neighbors. Ann seems to like it, for whatever reason.

“I’m starving,” Leslie yells over the din. “Have you been to JJ’s yet?”

He hasn’t. He feels like he should be supportive of Andy’s musical endeavors, since he’s living at Andy’s house and all, but Leslie starts yelling about waffles and, well, resistance is futile. Not that he tries resisting very hard. He hasn’t seen Leslie since the night they arrived in Pawnee since she was, in fact, grounded (for the first time in her life, according to Ann).

“So how’s Pawnee treating you so far?” she asks on the drive over. “Ann said you got a job.”

He shrugs. “Mail room at Kernston’s three days a week. It’s okay.” It’s a job, that’s all he really cares about. And Pawnee is _weird_ , is what it is, but he thinks he likes it well enough. “You really weren’t kidding about the raccoons.”

She gives him a very serious look. “I wouldn’t kid about something like that.”

“Look,” he says, “I’m sorry you got in trouble over all of this.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, but still.”

“Well,” she says, with the tiniest flush of color creeping into her cheeks, “it was totally worth it.”

Oh, god, he wants to kiss her.

But he doesn’t. That would be a bad idea, and not just because she’s driving right now. It would be a bad idea because, new job as a rubber nipple factory mailroom clerk or no, he still walks around most days feeling like a human disaster, and she obviously deserves so much better than that.

Quickly, waffles become a thing. _Their_ thing. Ann and Leslie come over for every single band practice, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday (and sometimes Friday and Saturday too), but somehow Leslie is always starving and doesn’t want to stay, and Ben always winds up at JJ’s with her, eating waffles.

It’s not dating. Just friendly. And he has good days and bad days and if the good days always happen to coincide with waffle days, well…

The fourth time they go to JJ’s, Leslie tells him excitedly that she’s thought of the perfect way for Ben to rebuild his reputation: get an internship somewhere in City Hall so that he can learn how _not_ to spend government money.

“And I know just the man for the job,” she says, pointing a forkful of whipped cream at him.

Of course she does.

“Because it’s totally normal for high school seniors to be familiar with everyone in city government,” he says, dryly.

She gives him a funny look. “Hey, you’re the elected official, not me.”

“Ouch,” he says, flinching. Leslie immediately looks horrified and reaches across the table to grab his hand, which has suddenly started to tremble.

“Crap! I’m sorry,” she says. “That was too soon.”

“No, it’s okay,” he mutters. Really, now that she’s holding his hand, it kind of is. She clearly feels awful about saying that, though, and it strikes Ben that this is maybe the first time he’s ever seen her embarrassed.

And he really wants to kiss her. Wants to slide into her side of the booth and put his arm around her waist, or maybe her shoulders, and leave it there.

But he doesn’t.

And suddenly, he finds himself interning in the Pawnee Department of Parks and Recreation two days a week, under the watchful eye (and mustache) of the new deputy director. Ben didn’t think the department wanted or needed an intern, and he’s not really sure if he’s doing them any good, but in the interview, as soon as he repeated what Leslie had assured him was the magic phrase—“I want to learn how to reduce government spending”—Ron had broken out into a high-pitched giggle and hired him on the spot.

The first time Ron throws a pile of sample budget projections in front of him and tells him to cut department spending by at least two-thirds, Ben starts shaking uncontrollably again. He really hates that this is happening, but the first set of itemized expenditures are for a temporary ice skating rink, for god’s sake.

“Those are just numbers on a piece of paper, son,” says Ron, slowly. “They can’t hurt you. They’re not even for a real project.”

“I know that,” he says, “but…”

Ron walks out of the conference room and returns shortly, with his arms full.

“These are some things that can hurt you,” he says, putting the largest one on the table. “A Claymore land mine.”

“You own a land mine? And it’s in a government building?”

“A fully loaded shotgun,” Ron continues, putting the gun down so that the barrel points directly at Ben.

“Good lord,” Ben says, scooting backwards in his chair. Is the safety even on? He has no idea how to tell.

“And finally, the most dangerous object of all—my ex-wife, Tammy,” Ron finishes, setting down a framed photograph of a severe-looking blonde woman.

Okay, that last one Ben doesn’t get. But after he’s spent a few hours locked in a room with the live weapons, the spreadsheets do seem a lot less frightening. And when he successfully reduces planned department spending by 75% through finding a series of local businesses to fund the ice skating rink, Ron claps him on the back and gives him a hand-whittled train whistle.

“So how’s your internship going?” asks Leslie over waffles the next day.

“Really great,” he says, and she beams.

He doesn’t just want to kiss her anymore. He wants to go on walks with her in Ramsett Park (okay they do that anyway, but he wants to do it holding her hand instead of holding a trash bag on volunteer litter removal weekends, which is what’s happening now), and he wants to make out with her in the back of movie theaters and take her out for dinners that aren’t waffles and run his hands through her hair and be her boyfriend again.

But he’s still having nightmares, and he still jumps backwards nearly every time any reasonably well-dressed adult person in City Hall so much as glances at him. One day he’d looked through the glass door in the Parks department and saw Leslie’s mother walking down the hall. Mrs. Griggs-Knope’s head didn’t even turn, but next thing Ben knew, he was holding his shoes in his hand and wondering when exactly he’d taken them off.

And he’s well aware that Leslie has been highly unsuccessful in the romance department, because now he’s heard her dating history from Ann too: _She still thinks double dates are a series of tests, and once a guy didn’t remember her middle name and she told him he’d failed the date test, and then it turned out she’d never told him her middle name. Once she made a guy name the first twenty vice presidents in order before she would agree to hold his hand. Once she brought SAT practice exams to the bowling alley and wouldn’t let anyone take their turn until they’d correctly answered a vocabulary question_. Okay, maybe that does explain why she doesn’t have a prom date yet, when prom is only a couple of weeks away.

Ben can name the first twenty-nine vice presidents in order, if he thinks about it really hard (but no further; for some reason he always mixes up Charles G. Dawes and Charles Curtis), but he’s still pretty sure that Leslie deserves a boyfriend who doesn’t unconsciously remove his footwear.

So he doesn’t try to kiss her. There are still too many bad days.

Like Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is a bad day. The Dwyer boys have pooled resources and sent their parents to some hotel that’s apparently known for its really nice towels for the weekend as a Mother’s Day gift, so at least Ben doesn’t feel like he’s intruding into what should be their private family time. But then he calls his own mother, and she’s clearly in a terrible mood but won’t tell him why.

Five minutes after he hangs up, Jess calls back to say that their parents basically haven’t spoken to each other since Ben left Partridge. For once, Jess doesn’t accuse him of ruining anyone’s life, but he still feels like it’s his fault.

He spends the next hour sitting in the basement, staring at nothing and trying not to think.

“Dude, is everything okay?” asks Andy, bouncing down the stairs with a giant bowl of something. “You’ve been hiding all morning.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“You should probably tell me what’s wrong. Wanna play Sonic 3? You can tell me what’s wrong while we play.”

Ben doesn’t want to talk about what’s wrong _or_ play Sonic 3. Thank god it’s usually pretty easy to distract Andy. “Are you eating chili for breakfast?”

“Not just chili. Turkey chili,” says Andy. “It’s so good. Want some?”

Crisis averted, Ben thinks. Although this might be a new crisis, since Andy is now trying to shove a forkful of turkey chili into his mouth, like Ben can’t feed himself.

“No, thanks,” he says, trying to get away.

“Come on, try it. It’s really awesome.”

“I don’t want any turkey—”

“No, dude, try it!”

And before Ben knows exactly what’s hit him—well, no, he knows exactly what’s hit him. _Andy_ has hit him. Or, more accurately, Andy’s put him in some sort of wrestling hold and slammed him into the floor. This probably explains all those terrible noises he hears through the basement ceiling whenever two or more Dwyer brothers are in the same room.

“Okay, okay,” Ben says, although it’s hard to talk with his face smashed against the throw rug. “I’ll try the chili.”

“Hey,” says Andy, who sounds disappointed for some reason, “why aren’t you fighting back?”

“I—what?”

“Come on, you’re supposed to fight back. Wrestle it out.”

“Wrestle _what_ out?” He has a feeling this isn’t about the chili anymore.

“I don’t know, man. You seem upset a lot of the time.”

“Will you let me get up?”

“Nope,” says Andy, cheerfully. “You either have to wrestle it out or tell me what’s wrong.”

Twenty minutes later, Andy’s sitting on the sofa in the living room, with Ben sideways next to him, in a headlock.

“Wrestling it out isn’t going to work,” he says, although he’s pretty sure that at this point, being rational is not going to help him accomplish anything either. There is a bowl of turkey chili balanced on his head, after all. “You’re way bigger than I am. And I don’t wrestle. And this is ridiculous.”

“Me and my brothers do this all the time,” says Andy, through a mouthful of chili. “It’s fun.”

“It’s not fun. And you can’t solve problems by wrestling.”

“Then tell me what’s wrong,” Andy says. “I can keep you in this headlock all day, you know.” But he doesn’t. He throws Ben on the floor again and starts the whole horrible process over.

An hour later, when Ben is thoroughly bruised and covered in rug burns, scratches, and an alarming variety of food crumbs from the floor, he finally snaps. Elbows Andy in the chest as hard as he can and just starts yelling that everything is wrong, that he doesn’t hate Pawnee but he hates why he’s _in_ Pawnee, that on top of everything else, he thinks he might have ruined his parents’ marriage now…

“Oh, shit, man,” says Andy, finally releasing him. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously, why didn’t you tell me it was that bad?”

“You couldn’t have done anything about it.”

“Well, no,” Andy says, “but you can’t keep everything bottled up. You’ll snap, like—what kind of stuff snaps? Like a rubber band.” He lunges in for another wrestling hold—oh, no, this is just a hug. “Look,” he says, “as long as you’re living here, you’re like my brother, even if you’re puny and you suck at wrestling. So tell me stuff.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know,” Ben says. Andy still hasn’t let go of him. “Thanks.”

Then Andy pounds him on the back a few times (ouch) and digs out an old, outgrown pair of Rollerblades out of his closet and forces Ben into them, and he finds a ball and a couple of hockey sticks in the garage, and he pushes Ben into the street.

Ben adds “roller hockey” to the list of things he is absolutely terrible at, and “smashing a ball really hard with a stick” to the list of things that make him feel better, even if it does not solve any of his problems in any way.

“What happened to you?” asks Leslie when she gets out of Ann’s car the next afternoon. She impulsively reaches up and brushes his hair aside a little, to get a better look at one of his many rug burns, and when her fingers sweep across his cheek, he has to fight the urge to grab her hand and just hold it forever.

“Andy’s version of therapy.”

“It looks painful.”

“You know,” he says, “I actually feel pretty good.”

And one Friday night he’s alone in the basement, reading Leslie’s favorite biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, when Ann practically falls down the stairs and collapses on the bed, clutching an unopened Snapple and smelling like strawberry wine coolers. This is one of the things about the endless rotation of older Dwyer brothers—pretty much all of them are willing to buy for Andy. (And probably Ben, too, if he’d ever asked, but he hasn’t.) Or at least, they tend to leave bottles of stuff half-hidden all over the house, and Andy and Ann find it, and drink it when his parents are at their weekly bridge club. And then they usually do other things which Ben, out of decorum, pretends not to hear.

“Are you drunk?” he asks, which is a dumb question. She’s obviously drunk.

“Maybe. But you’re an _idiot_ ,” she says, pointing the Snapple at him. “Why haven’t you asked Leslie out yet?”

“Um...”

“She’s been driving me crazy,” Ann slurs, pushing herself upright.

“How much have you had to drink?"

“Only one thing. Not important. Leslie is important. We just had a fight about you. I think.”

“Leslie’s here?”

“No, on the phone. Like Leslie would be over here when we’re drinking. She freaks out about it.” She tries to take a drink of her Snapple, but the lid is still on. Ben isn’t sure she noticed. “Did you know she calls me, like, every night to ask me why you haven’t tried to kiss her yet?”

His heart starts racing. “No.”

“And I was all like, ‘Leslie, he’s depressed, give him space,’ and she was like ‘But wouldn’t he be less depressed if he was making out with me,’ and then I was like ‘I don’t know, why don’t you ask him that,’ and then she was like ‘But you just told me to give him space,’ and then I think I said some other stuff, and then she was like, ‘I don’t know why I listen to you anyway,’ and then she hung up on me. Was that lame? I think that was lame.” She tries to drink the Snapple again.

“You know you have to take the lid off if you want that to work,” Ben says, and when Ann just stares blankly at the bottle, he takes the cap off himself and hands it back to her.

“See?” she says, holding up the bottle. “You’re nice. I see why she likes you.” Then she falls backwards, and the Snapple goes everywhere, soaking the sheets.

“I’ll get a towel,” he says, looking around. But before he can locate one, before he’s even aware that he’s going to say anything, he finds himself muttering, “I just think she deserves better than—”

“Oh, my god,” Ann groans, interrupting him. She pulls a pillow over her head. “Dude, you fucked one thing up. You’re not _broken_. Just...rent a limo, ask her to the prom. I’m sure she’ll say yes.”

“All right,” Ben says. He can feel a lopsided grin spreading across his face, and he’s kind of glad that Ann’s whole head is under a pillow right now.

“And we never had this conversation,” she adds.

But he’s already running upstairs to find a phone book.

From the top step, he hears Ann call, “Her middle name is Barbara.”

He knew that already.

***

Leslie is surprised, a little bit, when she pulls into the parking lot at Ramsett Park on Saturday morning and Ben is already there, sitting on the hood of his station wagon. Not that he’s ever been late or anything, it’s just that she’s always the first one to arrive. But no, he’s definitely there, holding what looks suspiciously like a box from the bakery and apparently waiting for her.

She parks next to him and gets out of the car. “Hi,” she says, smiling. “You’re here early.”

In one fluid motion, Ben puts down the box, slides off the car, and takes a single step towards her, and before she knows exactly what’s happening, his hands are behind her head and his lips are on hers and _oh_ , this is perfect. She thinks she might be melting.

“ _Finally_ ,” she says, looking up at him and hoping that she doesn’t sound too impatient. “I’ve been waiting for you to do that for _weeks_.” Her arms are around his waist. When did that happen? Whatever, it doesn’t matter; she’s not going to move them.

He chuckles. “Just weeks?” he says, teasingly. “I’ve been waiting to do it for four years.”

“Oh, shut up,” she says, and then she makes him shut up by kissing him again. It is _exactly_ as good as she remembers. No, better. Definitely better. He’s taller, obviously, and leaner, and she knows he’s shaved but there’s still a tiny hint of stubble on his jaw (she rubs her fingers against it, just to be sure). And she likes all those things; they make her feel more self-assured somehow. Older. More mature. Like this is more real.

Eventually he pulls back a little, and Leslie realizes that she’s somehow pushed him up against the side of his car, and her hands are flat against his chest. She seriously had no idea she was doing any of that.

“So,” Ben says, standing up a little straighter, “there was something I wanted to ask you.” He looks a tiny bit dazed. And flushed. God, he's cute.

“Yes,” she says. “I still like you.”

“Yeah, apparently. That wasn’t it, though.”

“Okay. Then what was it?”

“Can I take you to your prom?” he asks. “I know it’s a little weird, since I don’t go to school there, but I obviously can’t take you to _my_ prom, and—oof.”

“Sorry,” Leslie says, without unwrapping her arms. “Sometimes I hug too hard.”

“No, you’re good," he assures her, and it must be okay, because now he's holding her close against his chest.

And suddenly Leslie realizes that she hasn’t said yes, she wants to go to prom with him, so she says it, and he smiles, and then she giggles and kisses him again, and he opens the bakery box and hands her an éclair.

Picking up trash at the park has always been Leslie's absolute favorite thing to do on Saturday mornings, but she's never had quite so much fun doing it before.


	12. Epilogue, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer before he starts high school, Ben gets shipped off to a summer camp in Indiana, where the only person he knows is a mysterious pen pal...and then later some other stuff happens too.
> 
> This chapter features some lovely art by craponaspatula.

On Monday, when Leslie and Ann show up for rehearsal, Ben isn’t waiting for her in the garage, which is weird. He’s always waiting for her. Andy points her towards the basement room, and she taps softly on the door. Ben opens it right as the band starts playing. Crap, they’re loud.

“Ready to go to JJ’s?” she shouts over the horrible racket.

“In a minute,” he shouts back, waving her inside. “I have to show you this thing first.”

Leslie looks around the basement while Ben rifles through some papers in his backpack. She’s been in the room before, although she can’t remember exactly why, and she remembers it being mostly depressing even with the tiny window.

The room is still a little bit depressing, because it is a basement room and there’s no getting around that. It smells kind of damp. Most of Ben’s stuff—not that he brought very much stuff—is still in suitcases or boxes, because there’s no closet, and the walls are covered in horrible wood paneling that rattles slightly in time with Andy’s band.

But here and there, she sees little touches that make her smile, little things indicating that Ben really _lives here_ , that this is kind of, almost, maybe like home for him. There’s a stack of books piled up on the bedside table—some old science fiction novels, a Batman comic, her Eleanor Roosevelt biography, a dictionary. On top of the wobbly old dresser is a small framed picture of Jess and Sebastian. And she assumes the bedspread and throw pillows (throw pillows? really?) are his and not the Dwyers’, both because they’re brand new and because they’re plaid.

She plops down on one end of the bed and grabs one of the throw pillows. Behind it, crammed between the edge of the bed and the wall, are the Star Wars pajamas.

Leslie smiles to herself, and hugs the pillow to her chest.

“Okay,” Ben says, finally standing upright. “I can’t believe I haven’t asked you this yet, but what are you doing this summer?”

The horrible noise finally subsides. Leslie’s pretty sure it’s only a temporary respite, but at least now she doesn’t feel so compelled to run out of the basement screaming.

She shrugs. “Volunteering, mostly. And my mom got me an internship in City Hall, but it’s on the fourth floor.” Ben flinches. “So I haven’t decided if I really want to take it or not.”

“You aren’t getting a real job?”

Her mother’s been lecturing her about doing that, too. There have been a lot of lectures with the themes of “increased responsibility” and “making adult decisions” since spring break.

“I babysit a lot,” she says. “Enough to keep me in waffles, anyway.”

“Well,” says Ben, slowly, “would you _want_ a real job?”

“Doing what?” Not working at Kernston’s, she hopes. She puts the pillow back and sits up a little straighter.

Ben hands her a few sheets of paper. “This is kind of ridiculous,” he says, “but...”

When Leslie glances down at the top piece of paper, her heart skips a beat. She recognizes that logo. “Is this…?”

“Jerry stopped by the Parks department today to ask Ron if he knew anyone who’d make a good camp counselor.” He gives her a little smile. “Naturally, your name came up.”

Holy crap. She totally wants to be a summer camp counselor.

“Does Jerry even remember me?”

“Uh, yeah. Are you kidding? He said he’d hire you without an interview.”

“And…”

Leslie almost doesn’t want to ask the question, because she absolutely does not want to be the kind of person who makes important life decisions based on the decisions of the person she is currently dating. Especially since they’ve only gone on one actual date (to the movies on Sunday afternoon, although Leslie can barely remember anything about the movie for...certain reasons).

She tries to read Ben’s expression.

His mouth is really cute and she really likes when he uses it to kiss her, and that _just_ started happening again. Would anyone really blame her if she didn’t want to give that up just yet? Or really, what she should be asking is whether she’d blame herself.

“And the job’s mine if I want it. I’d just have to get a first aid certification.” He pauses. “A real one, like from the Red Cross. Not like the one we took at camp.”

“Do you want it?” she asks.

“Kind of?” he says, sitting next to her. “I mean, the pay isn’t all that good, but it would be better than Kernston’s.”

The band starts playing again.

“Um, and the Dwyers have been great and all,” Ben continues, at a much higher volume, “but I wouldn’t be _too_ upset if I wasn’t living in their basement.”

She sees his point. Or hears it, rather.

“On the other hand,” he continues, “I’m not sure I’d be very good at it.”

“Of course you’d be good at it,” Leslie yells, without thinking.

“What?”

“I said, of course you’d be good at it,” she repeats, more loudly. “You were always really good with the little kids.”

He looks kind of surprised that she would say so. “Really?”

“Well, yeah. All the baseball stuff? You were great at that.”

“Mostly what I remember about baseball is you yelling at me all the time.”

“Sorry.” She can feel her cheeks getting very hot.

“It’s okay, I forgive you,” he says, giving her arm a squeeze. “But I think Chris did most of the actual coaching.”

“No, he didn’t,” she says. “You did almost all of it, and you did almost all of the organizing too. And what about the math bowl? You planned the whole math bowl by yourself, and ran it, and it was awesome.”

They agree to think it over, separately.

And somehow they never make it to JJ’s, or even out of the basement. Somehow Leslie winds up with her floral-print vest off and her shirt twisted halfway around from where it should be, and somehow Ben winds up with his hair completely disheveled and his plaid shirt on the other side of the room. When the horrible music suddenly stops and they’re both jerked back to reality, Leslie finds most of her right arm in Ben’s undershirt, like all the way up to her elbow is pressed against his skin. Why doesn’t she ever seem to notice these things while they’re happening? She would probably enjoy noticing them. Like, a lot.

Maybe they should try not to get so carried away. At least until they’re back at camp and away from her mother and—wait, no, neither of them has made that decision yet.

“Well,” she says, hastily smoothing her shirt. “Good—good meeting.”

“Meeting?” The corner of his mouth twitches a little.

“What do you want to call it?” she asks. And where the heck is her vest? Oh, there it is, under the bed.

“Meeting is fine, I guess,” he says, flattening his hair. “Um, can we—can we schedule one for later this week?”

She grins at him.

Ann raises her eyebrows when Leslie gets back in the car.

“What were you doing down there?” she asks.

“Having a meeting to discuss summer employment opportunities,” Leslie replies, trying to sound mature about it.

“Mm-hmm,” says Ann.

“We were! Honest to god, Ann, look. I have the forms…” She waves the paperwork from camp in Ann’s face.

“You also have your vest on inside out.”

Thank god for Ann.

When Leslie presents the job opportunity to her mother that night, Marlene agrees that having a real, steady job, especially one with so much responsibility, would look _almost_ as good on Leslie’s resume as the City Hall internship. Her mother also agrees that camp would probably be safer than the fourth floor. And Jerry would almost certainly prove to be a better reference than Ethel Beavers.

In the end, Leslie makes a pro-con list, leaving Ben off of it entirely. And there are a few really important cons. She wouldn’t get to spend one last, relatively carefree summer in Pawnee. She wouldn’t get to spend one last summer with Ann before she goes to IU and Ann heads off to IUPUI. Well, unless Ann wanted to be a camp counselor too, but she thinks Ann’s pretty committed to candy striping at St. Joseph’s.

But she has always really, really wanted to be a camp counselor.

Sometimes one big pro is enough to outweigh all the cons.

She calls Jerry first thing the next morning, and he tells her that he’s openly delighted to have both her and Ben on board.

And Leslie is secretly delighted that she’ll get to spend the entire summer working an awesome job, with her awesome boyfriend, although she calls the Dwyers’ and yells at him for making a decision without telling her, ignoring the fact that she just did exactly the same thing. She’s especially delighted that they’ll be two hours away from her mostly awesome but also kind of frightening mother.

Leslie conveniently forgets to mention that Ben will also be working at camp until all of her hire paperwork has been signed and returned.

To her surprise, her mother’s immediate reaction to this news is not an obviously angry one. It’s much worse. Marlene starts inviting Ben over for sit-down dinners, which is weird and suspicious because they almost never have sit-down dinners; Leslie is always doing one after-school thing or another and Marlene is always working late.

“By dinner I think she really means interrogation session,” Leslie whispers over the phone. She’s whispering in case her mother might be listening outside the door. “I’m going to make you a list of her favorite conversation topics so you can study it before tomorrow night.” Crap. Why is she whispering? What if her mother’s listening on the phone in the kitchen? She’s screwed either way.

“Leslie,” Ben says quietly, “it’ll be okay. I survived dinners with Katie’s parents just fine.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of this as much as he’s trying to convince her.

She doubts that Katie’s parents could have been anywhere _near_ this scary.

Also she kind of hates Katie, just on principle.

Ben shows up for the first dinner visibly nervous, but he’s wearing a necktie and his shirt is ironed and tucked in, and her mother gives him an approving head tilt. Okay, the conversation really is an interrogation, and Ben probably doesn’t know how to interpret her mother’s head tilts like she does, but he doesn’t freak out _too_ much.

Then Marlene starts inviting him over for dinner-slash-interrogation sessions _all the time_.

“Mom, please, enough,” Leslie begs after the third dinner, because one, this is seriously uncomfortable anyway, and two, every time after Ben leaves, Leslie gets a lecture about how nicely he eats all his vegetables and why won’t she do the same and what is she, six years old? God, she can’t wait to move out of here.

“Someone needs to make sure he’s eating properly,” says her mother. “I doubt the Dwyers are.”

“Okay, but Mom—”

“You ought to be happy I’m inviting him over, sweetheart,” Marlene says. “I like this one.”

Leslie silently thanks Ann for the parade of losers that have failed to impress her mother over the past few years, and mostly forgives her mother for being so intimidating.

This new feeling of goodwill lasts until just before prom, when Marlene puts Leslie through an hour-long, uncomfortable lecture about conduct and propriety and the birds and the bees (like she doesn’t know that stuff—of _course_ she knows that stuff, she’s an adult now, right? A _responsible_ adult with a summer job). And she gets sent to the lady parts doctor “because you’re eighteen now, sweetheart,” and _that_ turns out to be even more unpleasant than going to the dentist, and she gets all those talks over again.

She also gets a little stressed out about the whole thing, and ends up kind of yelling at the lady parts doctor. For kind of a long time.

Although, she thinks, when she finally calms down, it _is_ almost time for prom. Leslie isn’t stupid; she knows perfectly well what most kids get up to after prom. And while she really is not planning on doing those things herself (or not _yet_ , anyway), she can’t blame her mother for being a little bit paranoid.

She and Ben have been having kind of a lot of meetings.

She _can_ blame her mother for giving her such an early curfew that they won’t even get to go to Nipple Hill with everyone else after the dance, though. Apparently Leslie has not been entirely forgiven for what happened over spring break.

But still. Senior prom is going to be awesome.

Leslie has known all along that senior prom would be awesome, because she’s been going to most of the planning committee meetings even though she isn’t officially on the planning committee, and because it’s like the last big thing the entire senior class is going to do together, and how could that not be fun? Even if she thinks parts of it, like electing royalty, are pretty dumb and based on all the wrong things. It’s a school event; shouldn’t those decisions be based on, like, scholastic achievements instead of popularity? No one has ever been able to answer this question to Leslie’s satisfaction. Most people have started yelling at her every time she asks it.

And, okay, the planning committee meetings aren’t always fun, because Lindsay has been showing up for most of them too. She isn’t on the committee either; she just wants to rub the fact that her date is Nick Newport, Jr. in everyone's face. Nick goes to the snooty private school in Eagleton (ugh), but he just thinks Lindsay is _so_ pretty (double ugh) and _so_ wonderful (triple ugh) that he’s taking her to both proms, and Lindsay is not going to let anyone forget that.

“Of course, the Wamapoke County Day prom was much _classier_ than ours is going to be,” Lindsay says at the end of the latest committee meeting, for like the millionth time, and she tips her tiny, pointy nose into the air. “It was held at the country club, and the theme was ‘Cape Cod.’ The fresh flower arrangements were simply divine. So were the crudités, and the lobster bisque.”

Lindsay has been circulating photos all afternoon, too. Leslie didn’t want to look at them at all, but she couldn’t avoid it forever, and ugh. Quadruple ugh. The Wamapoke County Day prom is pretty much in line with Leslie’s own personal vision of hell, except that usually when Leslie imagines what hell would look like, there are more raccoons. Crudités? Quintuple ugh.

“Shut up, Lindsay,” Leslie says, just loudly enough for Lindsay to hear her.

“What was that?” Lindsay asks, throwing her shoulders back. “Oh, it’s you.” She switches her voice from haughty to condescending. “Has Ann managed to convince one of her unwashed musician friends to accompany you for the evening yet, Leslie? How much did she have to offer him in return?”

“I have a date,” Leslie says, stiffly. “No one’s paying him.”

“That’s nice. Is he human?”

Leslie rolls her eyes. “Yes.” She tries to walk away, but Lindsay follows her at a slight remove, speculating loudly with Joan about what male person would be so hard-up that he’d be willing to spend an entire evening in Leslie’s presence. Finally Leslie just spins around and yells that it’s Ben, she’s going with Ben.

It takes both Lindsay and Joan a minute to process that information; Leslie knows they have extensive mental catalogues of every teenager in Pawnee and who’s done what with whom, and they’re both clearly trying to figure out which Ben she might be talking about. Eventually, Lindsay’s eyes widen and she elbows Joan in the ribs. Then Joan gets it, too. As Leslie’s mother would say, they both look like the cat that just ate the canary. Although Leslie doesn’t think either of them eats, which is probably why they're so cranky all the time.

“She doesn’t mean the one from summer camp,” says Joan, incredulously.

“Oh, but she does,” Lindsay replies. "Come on. You shouldn't be surprised that she had to go that far back to find someone."

“The boy mayor? The one who was so awful he got run out of office?”

“Oh, my god, Leslie. Are you really so hard-up that you have to go all the way to…where was it, Michigan? Montana?” Lindsay starts laughing, that horrible, hollow cackle that she’s adopted, which Leslie knows isn’t Lindsay’s real laugh at all. “All that way to find someone whose life is so shitty that coming _here_ and taking _you_ to prom seems like an improvement?”

The only thing that keeps Lindsay’s tiny, pointy nose from getting resculpted by Leslie’s prom planning binder is a timely intervention from Donna.

“Assault should be legal if the person is a jerk,” Leslie mutters, struggling to free herself. Crap, Donna’s got a strong grip. She watches Lindsay and Joan disappearing down the hall, braying like hyenas. Wait, do hyenas bray? No, donkeys do that. Either way.

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to see her old nose back on her face too,” says Donna, who seems to think she needs to keep Leslie pinned to the wall until Lindsay and Joan are completely out of sight. “But it isn’t worth you getting detention over.”

So Leslie counts backwards from a thousand by sevens, and thinks of éclairs, and how much she likes the dress she bought months ago.

She still thinks that senior prom is going to be awesome, even when she gets into a sort-of fight with Ben about which of them is going to rent the limo and plan all their pre-prom activities. He really doesn’t need to worry about it; Leslie’s had the entire evening planned for ages, including the limo rental, because she was going to go with Ann and Andy, and she was pretty sure Andy wasn’t going to figure out the limo part on his own.

“I had to do it all myself,” she insists. “I didn’t think I was going to have a date.”

“Okay, but now you do have a date,” Ben points out, “and he already rented a limo too, and he really likes you, and he wants to take you somewhere nicer than JJ’s.”

“Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?” she says. “That’s kind of dumb.” They’re at JJ’s right now, with Ann and Andy and Donna and her new boyfriend Quarterback Howser. No, Leslie reminds herself, the season’s over; he wants to be called Winston now. “And what’s wrong with JJ’s?”

“Nothing, but can’t we go somewhere with, like…” Ben glances around. “Tablecloths?”

They go back and forth like that for a while, and things get a little heated.

“Believe it or not, I _do_ know how to pick out a corsage, Leslie.”

“I never said you didn’t! It’s just, there’s one I already had my eye on, and—”

“You’re supposed to let me do this stuff, though!”

“Oh, shoot,” Andy interrupts. “That’s one of those flower things, right? Ann, am I supposed to get you a flower thing?”

Ann bangs her head against the wall a few times.

“It’s a stupid rule anyway, that the guy is supposed to do everything!” It really is. Like girls aren’t capable of renting limos and planning after-parties. Although Leslie isn’t sure she’s going to be allowed to go to any after-parties; her mother is still kind of angry about spring break…

“Oh, my god, Leslie. I just want to take you to a nice restaurant. That doesn’t make me a chauvinist.”

It finally ends when Leslie accidentally almost stabs Quarterback Howser—no, _Winston_ —with a fork. At that point Donna grabs Leslie by the arm and drags her into the hall that leads to the restrooms.

"Why do you keep pinning me to walls?"

“I don’t know what you did to that boy,” Donna says, releasing Leslie and tapping her collarbone with a press-on nail, “but every time he looks at you, his eyes turn into little hearts. It’s like watching a pathetic cartoon puppy. Let him plan. I don’t want to have my prom dinner here either.”

Leslie glances back over to their table. Ben is leaning on his elbows, holding his head in his hands, while Ann pats him consolingly on the back. His hair is sticking straight up, all of a sudden, and even though Leslie is really frustrated right now, she kind of wants to run over to the table and smooth it back down.

It occurs to her that this is probably what Ann means by “you’ve got to stop being so intense.”

She counts backwards by sevens again, and thinks about the fact that she has a boyfriend who not only brings her éclairs, but would probably bring her warm brownies too, and who just declared publicly that he _really likes her_. And she isn’t sure what Ben means, precisely, by _really likes you_ , but she is very sure that it is a good thing.

So she apologizes, and then she lets Ben pick the restaurant. And she lets him pick the corsage. The one he buys her is the one she wanted in the first place.

And the restaurant is awesome. Even though it doesn’t serve waffles.

Even though Leslie cut herself shaving earlier and she’s afraid someone is going to notice the Band-Aid on her leg and she’s worrying about it so much on the way into the restaurant that she wobbles on her heels and knocks Winston into a potted plant. But he doesn’t get any dirt on his tuxedo, and Donna doesn’t pin her to a wall, so everything is fine, really.

Even though Ben has been kind of jumpy since Leslie’s mother sat him down in the living room and lectured him for twenty minutes about what time she had to be home and where his hands are and aren’t allowed to go and what’s going to happen to him if he doesn’t comply with these rules. Leslie had tried to be reassuring after that. “Look,” she’d said, “if she didn’t like you, she wouldn’t have let me leave the house in the first place,” but Ben had still compulsively messed up his hair and then untied and retied his bow tie about seven times and asked if they accidentally broke curfew, if Marlene was going to invite him over for dinner again just so she could poison him. (Also, his hands have already gone most of the places they’re not supposed to.)

Even though Andy gets spaghetti sauce all over his tux and that makes Ann start sniping at him. Honestly, the spaghetti sauce is not the worst part of Andy’s tuxedo. She refrains from mentioning this to Ann, though.

Even though Ben is being embarrassingly weird and eating a _salad_ in front of all her friends. But he did bring her chocolates along with her corsage, so she forgives him for the salad.

Even though her Band-Aid somehow winds up on the bottom of Winston’s shoe as they’re exiting the restaurant. She’s just going to pretend she didn’t notice that.

The gym is awesome, too.

“Uh…what’s the theme?” Ben asks. Leslie isn’t sure there is a theme, but J.R. and his decorating committee have done a fantastic job of…well, the gym doesn’t look like a gym, at any rate, and she thinks that’s the important part, even though she has no idea what it’s supposed to look like. A spaceship, maybe. Or an MRI machine.

“Welcome to the future!” J.R. shouts, sidling up to Leslie. He throws a handful of confetti over them. “Pow. Ben. No, I don’t like that name.” Then he wheels around, bends over, and starts talking out of his butt. “I’m gonna call you Confetti Bomb. C-Bomb. Good to see you again.”

“Great,” says Ben, brushing confetti out of his hair. “Thank you. Good to see you again too.” He turns to Leslie as soon as J.R. disappears and mutters, “He got stranger.”

“A little bit,” she says, reaching up to knock one last piece of confetti from Ben's hair. “But I guess the theme is ‘the future’?”

It turns out that Ben wasn’t kidding when he’d warned Leslie that he was a terrible dancer, but it doesn’t matter very much to her; he’s trying, which is what counts. And he keeps telling her how pretty she is, which doesn’t hurt matters. And he looks _so_ good in a tux, and his eyes really do turn into little hearts every time he looks at her. Once Leslie becomes fully cognizant of those things, all she really wants to do is make out with him on his face, so the fact that he has zero rhythm doesn’t really matter. Plus her feet hurt and she feels weird walking around on the gym floor without shoes on, which means it would be better not to dance too much anyway.

Also, the more time she spends kissing him, the less time she has to spend being annoyed at all of the potentially annoying things surrounding them. Like Andy getting distracted halfway through the first dance and leaving Ann in the middle of the floor so that he can hang out with the band. Or like Mark Brendanwicz showing up with _Shauna_ , who isn’t even _in_ high school yet, and how gross that is.

“I take it he’s burned through everyone of an acceptable age?” Ben asks, and Leslie nods.

No, she would really rather just make out with Ben and not think about any of those things. Although at some point she should probably try to rescue Ann. Ann is currently fuming in a corner by herself, alternately glaring at Andy and at Justin, whose date is some really pretty girl Leslie doesn’t know.

“Your prom’s weird,” Ben says, when he comes back to their table after getting them punch. “Isn’t an ice swan more traditional?”

“Yeah, but who cares about swans?” she asks. “Li’l Sebastian is way more important. And he’s solid, so he won’t melt as fast.”

Ben shakes his head. “I’m never going to get that.”

“Ben,” she scolds, because seriously how could he not get it, “Li’l Sebastian is a Pawnee treasure.”

“It’s kind of a small horse.”

“An awesome small horse,” she insists.

“Okay, okay. He’s an awesome small horse.”

“You just haven’t been in Pawnee long enough.”

“Yeah,” he says, looking vaguely amused. “That must be it.”

Ann stomps over to their table and collapses into a folding chair, just as Lindsay and Nick Newport, Jr. get into a screaming match by the refreshments.

“He’s trying to convince the bassist to join Teddy Bear Suicide instead,” she says, crossing her arms tightly across her chest. “Sometimes I hate his stupid band. The only thing he’s done right is pick out a decent corsage.”

“That sucks,” says Leslie, although she kind of doesn’t want to deal with Ann’s problems right now. No, that would be selfish of her. Ann is her best friend, after all, even if she makes terrible life choices sometimes. Andy’s actually onstage with the band now, strumming a spare guitar and head-banging, even though the band has mostly been playing 1950s covers.

So she half-listens to Ann complaining for a while, about Andy's stupid band and his horrible, horrible tuxedo that he can’t even keep free of stains, and…she should probably be paying more attention to Ann. But Ben's hand is on her thigh under the table, and she is more than a little distracted by that even though he isn’t really moving his hand very much, especially because every time she tries to make eye contact with him, he looks away innocently like he isn't up to anything at all. Ann must be really angry at Andy if she isn’t noticing what’s going on.

They watch Donna and Winston do a shockingly flawless recreation of the prom dance number from _Grease_.

Eventually Nick Newport, Jr. approaches their table and asks Ann to dance. Within moments, Ann and Nick are grinding on each other, and within two songs they’re making out, which finally gets Andy’s attention. He leaps off the stage and runs over to Ann.

“Well,” says Ben, “this isn’t going to be pretty.”

“Maybe they’ll just talk,” Leslie says, hopefully, although the shouting has already started.

Ben shakes his head. “They won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Um, are you forgetting that I live in Andy’s basement?” he says. “Their arguments have pretty recognizable patterns. This is number three.”

“You’ve catalogued them?”

“They argue a lot.”

“Oh, god,” Leslie mutters, and she stands up. “I don’t want to see it. I think I’ll visit the whiz palace.”

Of course, when she gets to the girls’ bathroom, Lindsay is in the handicapped stall, smoking a cigarette. Lindsay’s shoes are in the middle of the floor and she’s sobbing hysterically, so hard that she doesn't even notice Leslie standing there. She’s opened a window to let out the smoke, but it still stinks. Ugh, Leslie thinks. The smell is going to get into her dress. Also, Lindsay’s in the bathroom with no shoes on? Gross.

She knows she shouldn’t stoop to Lindsay’s level, but this really is too good an opportunity to pass up.

No, she really shouldn’t.

It’s probably weird that she’s just standing in the doorway of the girls’ bathroom, isn’t it?

Leslie is still deciding whether or not she should say anything when, to her horror, two raccoons crawl in the open window. One of them immediately starts chewing on one of Lindsay’s abandoned high heels, and the other one just turns its head to stare at Leslie with its beady little eyes. Crap. She knows that look. It’s trying to decide what to do to her.

“Oh, hell no,” announces Donna, who’s followed Leslie in. She grabs Leslie by the arm and hauls her down the corridor. “Let’s go. Faculty bathroom.”

“The faculty bathroom is locked,” Leslie points out, although she is grateful to Donna for dragging her away from the raccoon. Should they try to save Lindsay? No, Lindsay will be okay. Leslie’s sure she’s had rabies shots and everything. If there’s one public health issue that Pawnee is on top of, it’s rabies.

Donna snorts and pulls a bobby pin out of her hair. “I can deal with locks,” she says, flicking the end of the pin.

And then they run into Ben, who looks very lost. Also disturbed. And grateful to see them.

“Something crazy is going on in the men’s room,” he says.

“Raccoons?”

“No. I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely not raccoons.”

Donna tosses her head back. “I’m going in.” She pushes the door open and peers past the urinals. “That,” she says, raising her eyebrows, “is our old friend Joan getting nasty with the gym teacher’s husband.”

“Oh,” says Ben. “Okay. So there is a logical reason why one of the chaperones just tried to drown herself in the punch bowl.”

“I’m sorry everything got so crazy,” says Leslie, once they’ve finally made it back into the gym. “I really wanted you to have a good time.”

But Ben just smiles at her, smoothes her hair, and presses his lips into her forehead.

“Are you kidding?” he says. “I’m having a great time.” He leads her back on to the dance floor, and they stay there for the rest of the night. Leslie finally gives up and kicks off her shoes. They should be safe; she hasn’t seen any evidence that the raccoons have left the bathroom.

Eventually the band goes on break, and a DJ comes on, and Leslie watches Ann drape herself across Andy’s lap while he hangs out with the band. Ugh, now they’re feeding each other pretzels.

“I really don’t get it,” she says to Ben. “I mean, I like Andy, and I know you guys are friends and everything, but look at how beautiful Ann is. And she’s so smart and talented and—and she could do so much better.”

The corner of Ben’s mouth twitches. “Are you trying to get me to go out with her?”

“What? No,” she says, giving him a swat for good measure, although she knows he's kidding. “I’m keeping you for myself.”

“Thank goodness,” he says. “I was worried for a minute there.” Leslie is about to tell him to shut up, but he kisses her before she can get the words out.

When the DJ plays “Whoomp! (There It Is),” Ben stiffens a little, and Leslie’s momentarily afraid that he’s going to freak out or start shaking or something. But instead he just takes a deep breath, then leans in and says, “Pawnee really is great.”

And maybe they miss the announcements and crowning of royalty and really all of that stupid popularity contest stuff because they’re making out in front of Leslie’s locker.

She lets herself feel a tiny, tiny pang of justification (and a tinier pang of guilt) when she sees Lindsay leaving the prom alone in her wobbly, gnawed strappy sandals, with her eye makeup smeared so much that it looks like her face is melting. But the tiny pang of guilt disappears completely when Lindsay suddenly whirls around and runs across half the gym to yell at Ann. Leslie can’t hear what exactly they’re arguing about (Nick, she supposes) but within moments, it’s clear that Ann is going to come out on top. Before too long, Lindsay’s eye makeup is even more tear-streaked, and then she runs out of the gym and doesn’t come back.

Good for Ann.

So yeah. Senior prom is pretty awesome, even if Leslie has by far the strictest curfew of anyone she knows, and she really is the only one who isn’t going to get to roll down Nipple Hill.

“It’s okay, really,” says Ben, although Leslie knows Ann and Andy are heading over there with most of the senior class after prom ends, and he’ll be left alone. “I see that hill all the time at work. I don’t need to see it now.”

“Yeah, but you don’t roll down it in your formal clothes at work. This is a Pawnee tradition,” she complains. “I want to go. And I don’t want you to miss out on the fun. You should go without me.”

“And do what? Roll down it with J.R.? I don’t think so.” He squeezes her hand as the limo pulls onto her block. “See you tomorrow?”

“JJ’s,” she says at once. “Breakfast. I’m buying.”

“Deal.”

There is a definite advantage to having the entire limo to themselves.

Even with that slight delay, she still gets to the front door fifteen minutes before her curfew. Leslie hugs her mother goodnight, changes into her owl pajamas, washes off her makeup, and makes herself a mug of hot chocolate even though it’s warm out. Then she digs her old flower press out of her closet, arranges her corsage in it just so, and starts sketching out some initial plans for her next scrapbook. Well, set of scrapbooks. One for her, one for Ann, one for Ben, maybe one for Ben’s mom…

She pulls her phone off her bedside table and dials the Dwyers’ number, hoping she doesn’t wake anyone up.

Ben answers on the first ring.

“I knew you wouldn’t go to bed,” he says, without even saying hello or asking who’s on the other end.

They stay up way, way too late, but Ben is wide awake and waiting for her when she pulls into the Dwyers’ driveway the next morning, and he makes it through a post-breakfast roll down Nipple Hill without getting _too_ queasy.

“Sorry,” Leslie says. “I forget not everyone has an iron stomach.”

“I think I might need to lay off the waffles for a while,” he groans.

She takes a few more rolls while he recovers.

For the first time that she can remember, Leslie’s glad that schoolwork slows down so much at the end of the year. It gives her more time to doodle ideas for the camp talent show in her notebooks. Oh, and they should do the Olympiad again. And her cabin is going to be _awesome_. She has so many ideas for decorating.

And maybe, just maybe, she’ll be able to talk Jerry into buying some field hockey equipment.

Maybe they should have a dance? Even if camp is two hours from Pawnee, Andy would probably bring his band up if he could find a ride. Of course, then she’d have to listen to Andy’s band again…

Camp is going to be so great. The whole summer is going to be fantastic. It really can’t come soon enough.

But at the same time, she feels like summer is coming way too fast. There are some moments that Leslie just wants to hold onto forever, like senior skip day, when the whole gang gets kicked out of the snow globe museum for shaking the globes too much, and Andy and Ben spend the next hour composing an elaborate manifesto about why that rule is so stupid.

And she laughs along with them, not just because Andy’s impression of the museum lady is so hilarious (it is), but because she’s with her favorite people, and everyone is having fun, and everything just feels perfect, right now.

Or the weekend that Teddy Bear Suicide finally gets its first gig, and they all help pile gear in Ben’s station wagon even though the gig is less than a block away, and the venue is someone’s garage. More specifically, the venue is the other guitarist’s Uncle John’s garage sale. Of course the band is loud and awful, and in reality they’re probably driving people away from the garage sale instead of drawing them in, but it’s kind of fun to get to hang out and say she’s with the band, even if she and Ann and Ben are all filthy and sweaty from wrestling with the amplifiers. But Andy’s _so_ excited that the ringing in her ears and the subsequent cluster headache is kind of worth it.

The best moment might be Leslie’s final Model U.N. conference, at the high school in Blyth, when she sets a new record by creating a Palestinian state in only twenty-eight minutes. Ben comes and watches, like watches really intently (not that she’s watching him—she isn’t, she’s creating a kick-ass Palestinian state in only twenty-eight minutes) and takes a lot of notes on a legal pad.

To her immense annoyance, Ben’s response to her accomplishment is “What took you so long?”

She’s kind of pissed at him, until the corner of his mouth twitches and she realizes he’s joking. “Very funny,” she says. “Like you could do better.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Um, two years ago I did the entire Chemical Weapons Convention treaty in nineteen minutes.”

Crap, that’s impressive. Maybe he wasn’t joking.

“At a tiny conference in Partridge, though?” she asks. She’s got him there.

“Hardly,” he scoffs. “Try a three-day statewide conference in Minneapolis.”

So the conference is awesome, but the other best part is spending the entire rest of the weekend camped out in her living room with her collection of tiny flags, holding a two-person Model U.N. conference with Security Council debates and writing position papers and crap she does not want to admit that Ben might actually be better at this than she is. It’s so intense that Marlene lets Ben sleep on the couch (not that they sleep at all; they spend most of the night arguing about appropriate interventions into human rights violations in the Balkans) and orders pizza for them and doesn’t lecture Leslie about eating vegetables.

“Oh, my god,” says Ann on Monday, when Leslie’s trying to explain why she never called Ann to go shopping this weekend like she was supposed to. “Leslie, that’s dorkiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“They were global policy debates, Ann!” She still doesn’t want to admit to herself that Ben won most of them, even though quite frankly watching him debate geopolitical strategy like that was pretty hot. Maybe she lost because she was distracted. That is so not fair, that Ben would inadvertently use his hotness as a rhetorical strategy. She should probably yell at him for that. Boutros Boutros-Ghali would never stoop so low.

“Yeah.” Ann rolls her eyes. “Dorky.”

“Well, what did you end up doing?”

“Nothing,” Ann sighs. “Andy was camping in David’s backyard again.”

Yeah, her boyfriend is better than Ann’s. (Not that it’s a competition. It isn’t. But if it was a competition, she would totally win.)

Graduation day comes, and her dad drives up from Florida, and she’s glad he came but the whole thing is kind of weird. Her dad just doesn’t _fit_ in Pawnee. He brings her an assortment of presents: a pen with her initials engraved on it, a bag of grapefruits, and a stuffed Mickey Mouse in graduation robes. The Mickey is cute, she supposes, and the pen is kind of nice, but there is no way in hell she’s eating those grapefruits, not even with a ton of sugar on them.

The ceremony seems to take forever, and Leslie loves every single minute of it. Loves wearing the robes and the hat. Loves listening to all the speeches, loves watching everyone walk across stage to get their diplomas, loves shaking the principal’s hand, loves looking out to the crowd and seeing everyone: her parents, sitting together and not fighting; Ann’s entire family, grinning and waving; Ben looking kind of miniscule next to all the Dwyers, holding a bouquet of all her favorite flowers. Loves when it’s finally over and she gets to hug everybody. Loves posing for photos all over the school.

She does not love the dinner afterwards. Her parents finally start sniping at each other in front of Ben and the Perkinses and the Dwyers and the Meagles, and that’s embarrassing.

The good part of this is that her mother completely forgets to give her a curfew.

Donna throws what has to be the best graduation party of all time, and she doesn’t get home until almost two in the morning, exhausted and giddy, and feeling like finally, _finally_ , she’s really all grown up.

And maybe she’s a little bit sad, when she’s sitting in her driveway in the passenger seat of Ben’s station wagon and it hits her that Ben has been even quieter than usual for most of the day. Maybe that’s because the whole day has been overwhelming enough even for her, and this is her hometown and she knows everybody, and he doesn’t…but maybe there's more than that.

And for some reason they’re just sitting in her driveway, listening to the radio, not looking at each other and not talking. She could just get out of the car, she supposes; she probably _should_ just get out of the car, but…

“I’m not upset that I missed all this stuff in Partridge,” he says, “if that’s what you were wondering.”

“How do you always know what I’m thinking?”

He shrugs. “I graduated months ago, anyway,” he tells the steering wheel. “Today was your day.”

Almost an entire song goes by on the radio.

“Ben?” she says, softly, and he looks at her. “I’m glad you’re here.” She knows it’s inadequate, but it’s the best she can think of, right now.

He leans over the middle seat and kisses her on the forehead.

“Me too,” he says.

***

Of course they have to have a celebratory waffle breakfast at JJ’s before they leave for camp. He should not have been surprised by that in the slightest.

“What?” Leslie says. “It’s going to be almost nine weeks before I get to have real waffles again.”

“Don’t we get one afternoon off a week?” he asks. “We can leave camp. Somewhere nearby has to serve waffles.”

She beams at him. “Good thinking. I forgot we get to do that now.”

She doesn’t stop beaming at any point during the drive. Ben doesn’t think he’s seen anyone this excited since Jess was five years old and got her first bicycle for Christmas.

“Camp hasn’t changed at all!” she exclaims, when they get out of the car. She’s right, it hasn’t. Ben thinks that’s maybe not such a good thing; it looks like Jerry hasn’t done any maintenance at all in the past four years.

They meet the other counselors and have a few hours of orientation and Jerry takes everyone on a grand tour of the camp. Well, there's one difference: Jerry still hasn’t fixed the light that doesn’t turn off, but he stopped replacing the bulb, so now it never turns on.

When the tour is over, Jerry distributes the lists of campers in their respective cabins. Leslie has three Katies, two Laurens, and a Natalie, whom she immediately identifies as Jess's weird friend April’s little sister. Ben, of course, recognizes none of his campers' names, but when Leslie scans his list, her face falls.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

She points at one of the names. “That kid. Greg Pikitis.”

“What’s wrong with him?” He’s got a cabin of ten-year-olds; how bad could they possibly be?

She launches into some bizarre story about providing childcare during PTA meetings at one of the elementary schools, and a statue of some woman named Dorothy Everton Smythe getting toilet papered, and raccoons in the kindergarten classrooms, and all the ketchup vanishing from the school cafeteria and reappearing weeks later on Leslie’s front lawn and…wow that story goes on for a while.

“But you don’t have any proof it was him?” Ben asks, when she finally stops for air.

“Not exactly,” says Leslie. Her jaw is still clenched. “But I know it was Pikitis. Nothing ever happens except when his mom drops him off for the PTA meetings.”

They head up to the mess hall for what Ben assumes is the first of many hamburger dinners (Jerry’s burgers are simultaneously burned and raw and nowhere near as good as Ron’s), and the Greg Pikitis stories don’t stop until Leslie’s on her third s’more.

After dinner, they unload the station wagon (Leslie’s brought about six times as much stuff as he has, including one large box that holds nothing but planning binders) and start setting up their respective cabins.

Well, all Ben really has to do is unpack his two suitcases and make his bed.

“Are you done yet?” Leslie asks, sticking her head in the door.

“Yeah, I guess so. Are you?”

“Almost. Can you help? I need someone to reach the tall stuff.”

“Good lord,” he says, when he sees her cabin.

She beams again. “Nice, right?”

It looks like if Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin collided with Jess’s bedroom and the women’s history section of a bookstore. At first, Ben has a hard time picking out specific details. Lots of purple. The history of the 19th Amendment in ceiling mobile form, all written out on cardboard cutouts in the shape of Susan B. Anthony’s silhouette. A chore chart, with lots of sparkly unicorn stickers, hanging by the door. Tiny stuffed penguins, waving tiny homemade flags reading “Welcome to camp!” on each of the bunks.

He peeks in her bedroom. _That_ looks like an office supply store exploded inside of a laundry room.

“It’s…”

It’s more than a tiny bit nuts, is what it is.

“It’s amazing,” he says, keeping his face straight. “I love it.”

“You don’t think it’s too much?” she asks, with a tiny note of worry in her voice. She’s sweaty and her hair is all over the place and the ancient t-shirt she's wearing is streaked with grimy handprints and she has never, ever looked so beautiful before.

Really, the best response is to kiss her. The _only_ response is to kiss her.

“So it’s okay?” she asks. They might have ended up on one of the lower bunks, and knocked a penguin on the floor, and Leslie might have to dust that particular penguin off quite a bit before it will make an acceptable “welcome to camp” gift.

“Leslie,” he says, smoothing one of her flyaways, “you are going to be the absolute best camp counselor ever.”

She grins, and swats him on the arm.

“Here,” she says, and she hands him a giant poster of the Greek goddess Diaphena and a box of thumbtacks, and points at the one blank section of wall. “Will you hang that in the corner?”

Ben wonders, momentarily, why he's finding himself sexually attracted to this centaur woman (from the waist up, anyway, and that's creepy, what is _wrong_ with him) until—

"Um," he says, trying not to laugh, "did you buy this poster because it looks like you?"

"What? No, I bought it because she's a powerful woman. It doesn't—" She darts around all the crap on the floor and skids to a stop in front of the poster. "Oh, my god. She does kind of look like me."

Ben starts laughing, then. He can't help it. "She's pretty hot," he says. "Especially the horse parts."

"Shut up!" Leslie yells, and then she punches him a couple of times.

Diaphena, thank goodness, does not judge them for making out right in front of her.

And maybe they make it down to the lake in time to watch the sun set, and it's just like it was four years ago, only better, because they're not fourteen and naïve and stupid anymore.

And maybe the whole summer can feel like this, like anything might be possible, even though he’s pretty sure that most of the outside world is still going to hell. (Maybe it’s going to hell because of him and maybe it isn’t. His phone calls to Partridge are always really depressing, is the point. But maybe it’s not his problem anymore no matter whose fault it is. Maybe he has lots of time to think about those things in between coaching baseball and running mini Model U.N. conferences and co-planning the Olympiad and trying to find any shred of evidence that the trail of destruction that seems to follow Leslie everywhere is, in fact, caused by Greg Pikitis.)

And maybe at some point he realizes that he’s fallen completely, totally in love with one Leslie Barbara Knope. And maybe that’s so big, maybe it's such a big, scary thing with so many potentially disastrous implications, that he keeps it to himself. For now, anyway. He wants to be sure—not that he’s in love with her, he's sure of that, and when he thinks about it, it seems pretty obvious that he’s been in love with her since she appeared in Partridge and drove him to a park and gave him those pajamas—but he wants to be sure that…something…how do you _tell_ a girl you love her, anyway?

It’s not like there’s anyone he can _ask_. Or anyone he _would_ ask, even if he could.

They don’t bring up what’s going to happen at the end of camp until it’s almost upon them, not until their very last Tuesday afternoon waffle escape. (Actually, Ben is eating a salad, because this restaurant’s waffles are kind of terrible and camp has a serious lack of vegetables.) Leslie suddenly bangs her side of whipped cream on the table and announces, “You’d better not be planning to dump me at the end of the summer.”

He nearly chokes on a cherry tomato.

“That’s why you shouldn’t eat those things,” she says, and then, “You’re not, right? Not like the first time?”

“I didn’t dump you the first time,” he gasps.

“You kind of did.”

“I didn’t. I certainly didn’t want to.”

“Well, okay,” she concedes.

“And I don’t want to this time.”

“But are you going to?” And Ben kind of can’t believe it, but she actually looks nervous, and how is that even _possible_ , that Leslie would be nervous about _him_ dumping _her_? She’s dragging her fork through the whipped cream and stabbing a tiny corner of her waffle over and over again, and her napkin, he’s just now noticing, is in shreds.

“No,” he says.

“You’re sure about this.”

“Yes.”

“Even though we’re going to be five hours apart for the next four years and you’ll probably have to go to Minnesota during all the holidays?”

Ben pinches the bridge of his nose. He thinks he can guess where this is coming from. “Did you call Ann last night?”

“I did. She and Andy broke up again, just so you know.”

“Okay, well…”

“Because he apparently said that while they’re not in the same town for college, and he’s in a band, he can’t be totally responsible for whatever ladies might want to get with the hot guy in the band.”

“Well, that's a horrible—”

“And so I didn’t know if—if you wanted to—I mean, there are going to be lots of girls in Chicago, you know? And—and they’ve been having sex for a while, even, I think—”

“They definitely have been,” he mutters.

“And we haven’t, yet,” she finishes, flushing crimson. “So I guess what I’m saying is, if you want to—to not—but you have to tell me now—but I guess I’d understand?”

“ _No_ ,” he says, and to his own surprise, he finds himself throwing some bills on the table (their total is always exactly the same; he doesn’t need to wait for the check), grabbing Leslie’s hand, and marching her out of the restaurant.

“Ben, what are you…” she starts, but he’s still leading her, across the diner parking lot and over to the only thing that counts as a tourist attraction in this part of the state, a gazebo in which Indiana’s third-largest rocking chair is housed. It crosses his mind that this would be better in Indiana’s largest rocking chair (he doesn’t know where that is) or its second-largest rocking chair (which is somewhere outside of Bloomington, according to Leslie) but never mind, Indiana’s third-largest rocking chair is preferable to Indiana’s crappiest diner, and he needs to do this before either he loses his nerve or she freaks out even more.

He boosts her into the chair, leaving his hands around her waist.

She’s slightly below his eye level right now, and her eyes are so _blue_ and it’s surprising, actually, how calm he feels right now, even though he’s about to _say it_.

“Leslie—”

“What?”

Okay, of course she would have to interrupt him. Better do it fast, then.

“I love you,” he says.

She freezes. “Wait. What?”

_Now_ he’s nervous. “I love you,” he repeats, “and also, we both have cars now, so if you think that I’m going to break up with you just because we’re not going to the same—do you need to go call Ann?”

“Yes,” she says. “I mean, no. No, I don’t—crap.” Now he’s _really_ nervous. Leslie covers her eyes with her hands and then, so softly he can barely hear it, she whispers, “I just totally screwed that up.”

“Sorry,” he says, automatically, feeling his heart sink. “I shouldn’t have—”

“No!” Leslie squeaks. “I just—wow, I do need to call Ann. But not now.” She takes a deep breath, removes her hands from her eyes, and gives him that huge, gorgeous grin. “I love you too.”

God, she’s amazing.

*

One of the best things about spending all summer at camp is that the dorm bathrooms don’t seem nearly as disgusting as they otherwise might.

Ben’s mom drives down and meets him in Chicago to help him move in to the dorms and he’s surprised by how glad he is to see her. She hugs him like she hasn’t seen him in years, not months, and almost cries, but then she calms herself, and goes back to the culturally approved mom topics of conversation: he’s too skinny, he needs a haircut, is his car running okay. Mostly she seems relieved that she _can_ just say all the expected mom things, relieved that he's on his feet and functional and maybe even kind of happy.

“Jess wanted to come,” she says, “but school started already.”

“And Dad?” He isn’t sure he wants to know.

“Someone had to stay with Jess,” she says, setting her jaw.

Okay, so there’s more to that story that he definitely does not hear over dinner. Instead she makes him do all the talking, mostly about camp and Leslie. (She also seems kind of relieved that Leslie is remaining in his life for the foreseeable future.) And when she leaves, and calls his room late that night to say she’s arrived safely, she calls from her sister’s house in Muncie instead of from Minnesota.

Great.

Ben’s roommate is all right, he supposes; they have about four things in common, but those things include similar taste in music and movies, so at least they don’t have to fight about that stuff. And Paul is from Chicago, so that’s good, it’ll be easier to get acclimated with a roommate who knows the area.

On their way back from the dining hall after breakfast the next morning, Paul suggests that they check their mailbox just because (there is mutual agreement that they ought to test out the key, at least) and surprisingly, there’s something in it already, a small slip of paper.

“You have a package,” says Paul, handing Ben the slip.

“Probably from my grandma,” he says. He stuffs the slip in his pocket and goes to find the mail room, and Paul wanders off to see if the cute girls down the hall are home.

Of course the package isn’t from Ben’s grandma at all.

Thank god Paul isn’t here. Ben wants to be alone for this. He throws the package onto his bunk along with his scissors, hoists himself up, and slices through the packing tape.

The first thing he pulls out of the box is a calendar page, with Columbus Day, the first long weekend, circled. _Don’t make any plans for this weekend!_ is printed neatly next to the dates, in big red letters. _I’m coming to visit. You don’t have a choice in the matter._

Next he pulls out four Chicago guidebooks, heavily annotated and bookmarked with Post-Its and index cards and leftover unicorn stickers.

Next is a letter, handwritten on Pawnee municipal government letterhead.

_Dear Ben,_

_Okay, so don’t make any plans for Columbus Day weekend. I just got my schedule and my classes end at noon on Friday, so if I leave right after that, I can be in Chicago for dinner, I think. First things first, I think we should go get deep dish pizza, so maybe you should start scoping out some places? I’m not sure I’m going to like it, I’m pretty sure it’s just pizza that is harder to eat, but everyone says it’s amazing, so we should probably try. Anyway, I survived the calzones—deep dish can’t be any worse, right?_

_I went to the planetarium once, when I was seven, and I remember it being awesome and I’d like to go back. But maybe we should go to the Field Museum instead? I can’t believe I haven’t asked you which you like better, outer space or dinosaurs. And I want to see Wrigley Field, even though I know there’s a strike (and wouldn’t the playoffs be going on now, anyway? And the Cubs usually aren't good enough to make the playoffs, right?), because of its historic importance. Also, I found a walking tour about the Great Chicago Fire that I think could be fun…_

He thumbs through the pages (all eight of them, front and back sides), reading them over a few times, smiling every time he gets to the end, tracing his fingers over her _Love, Leslie_.

Next he comes to a scrapbook, a smallish one this time. There are pictures of prom: one of Leslie looking beautiful even though her dress is ridiculous and poofy, and him looking awkward and dorky in the tux; one of Ann and Andy, with Andy having the time of his life and Ann looking significantly less thrilled about things. There are a few photos from camp (seriously why does he never notice anyone having a camera at camp?) and basically everything else that happened while he was in Pawnee.

She even has a picture of Indiana’s third-largest rocking chair, cut out of a magazine or a tourism brochure or something.

In between the pictures, the scrapbook is filled with notes from everyone—Andy, Ann, Donna, even J.R. and Winston and Ron. And he melts, a little bit, because how could he not appreciate the fact that she’s tried to make him something approximating the high school yearbook, signed by everybody, that she knows he doesn’t have?

But his favorite picture is the one from Leslie’s graduation. She was right, he thinks. She does look awesome in the hat. That’s the one he would pull out and stick on his wall, if he was going to tear apart the scrapbook.

Of course he doesn’t have to rip it apart, because she’s also included a framed photo (“for your desk”) and an unframed photo collage (“for the wall by your bed, or whatever”).

And under the photo college is an index card, taped to a small box: _DESTROY AFTER READING! Okay, just so you know, I’m planning to go to the campus health center the instant I get to Bloomington (I do not want my mother finding out about this) and I’m planning to go on the Pill, but just in case, here, we should have backup. Nothing is 100% effective, you know._

Oh god. Ben’s hands jerk back, instinctively, and he drops the box of condoms onto his plaid bedspread.

He cannot _wait_ for Columbus Day weekend.

Paul sticks his head back in the room, then, accompanied by the cute girls from down the hall (are they cute? Paul says they’re cute. Ben can’t tell one way or the other) and some guy he vaguely remembers meeting at orientation last night that he thinks lives on the fourth floor. “What did your grandma send?” Paul asks.

“Oh, it’s from my girlfriend,” he says, looking up. “Pictures, mostly.” He hastily stuffs the condoms under his pillow before anyone can see them.

“Awesome,” says Paul, although it sounds like he doesn’t really think so.

“Hey,” says the kid from the fourth floor. Michael? Matt? Matt, he thinks. “Are you that kid who was elected mayor last year?”

“Oh,” Ben says, taking in the Vikings t-shirt that Matt’s wearing under his flannel. Damn it, why did it never occur to him that he wouldn’t be the only person from Minnesota here? “Yeah, I was. _Am._ It, uh, it didn’t go well.”

“Cool,” says Matt, shrugging. And Ben braces himself, waiting for the rest of it...but there isn't any more.

“We’re going to explore campus,” says one of the girls. “Wanna come?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ben says. Before he climbs down from his bed, though, he reads the end of Leslie’s letter one more time.

_I love you, and I miss you already, even though I just saw you two hours ago and I’ll see you again tomorrow for waffles._

_Love, Leslie_

_P.S. Also, you should probably try to find a good waffle place near your dorm._

_P.P.S. I’m not kidding about that._

_P.P.P.S. Seriously. Because I already found a good waffle place in Bloomington, and I don’t want you to have to drive there every long weekend, because there really is a lot more to do in Chicago. So you should really find one as soon as possible._

_P.P.P.P.S. Okay, I’ll stop now. You’re awesome. I can’t wait to see you again. Not like literally right now, since I’ll see you tomorrow morning, but when you read this letter, and…you know what I mean, right?_

***  
 _fin_


	13. Bonus Chapter (R for explicit sex)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you think a fic is over, but it's not. This chapter has colloquially been referred to as "Doin' it in a Dorm Room." (Note: Characters are no longer underage.)

“I miss you like crazy.”

“I miss you too.” 

“I think about you all the time.”

“ _All_ the time?”

“Well, most of the time. You know. When I’m not in class or doing homework or at meetings.” 

“So that’s what, half an hour a day?” he asks, teasingly. He knows how many clubs she’s joined already.

“Ben, I’m serious.” 

He sighs, and twists the phone cord around his fingers. “I know.” 

“Columbus Day is just…farther away than I thought it would be.” 

“Yeah.” Another three weeks and two days, which is way longer than he wants to think about…

They don’t speak for a while after that. Ben just holds the phone against his ear, wishing he could hear her breathing—well, really, wishing he was holding Leslie right now instead of the phone.

“What are you doing this weekend?” she asks, finally.

“I don’t know. Paul’s leaving for his cousin’s wedding in St. Louis on Friday morning. I’ll probably just hang out with Sarah.” 

“Are you sure,” Leslie asks, for the fifteenth time at least, “that Sarah is…I mean, that she isn’t…”

“Yes. I am sure she’s a lesbian. I told you, I walked in on her and another girl in the mail room.”

“And the cute girls down the hall?” 

“Leslie,” he says, with a tiny sigh, “no one is hitting on me.”

“But if they were—”

“To be honest, I probably wouldn’t notice.” 

She laughs a little, finally. “Okay, okay. That’s true. You’re very oblivious sometimes.”

“And even if I did notice, I wouldn’t care. Or reciprocate. I already have an awesome girlfriend, remember?” 

“I know. And I trust you.” She exhales, deeply. “God, I hate being like this. If I was friends with myself, I’d yell at me right now. Or maybe I’d bake myself brownies. I wish there was an oven in the dorms. Isn’t that weird, that they trust us to—to drive, and to do chemistry experiments in the lab, but they won’t trust us with an oven? The dining hall brownies are terrible and they don’t even have them most of the time and—and, like, the salad bar is there all the time, and who even wants that? Why aren’t there always brownies?” 

“I love you so much.” 

“Ben!” she admonishes, so loudly that he almost drops the receiver. “That’s not helping right now.” 

“Sorry.” No, he isn’t.

Leslie gives an exaggerated groan. “I love you too. And I want to kiss you on your mouth. And—” he can actually hear a _gulp_ over the phone, and her voice becomes so quiet he can barely hear it—“And I want to do other things to you. On other parts of your body. And I want you to do them to me.” 

Oh, god.

He clenches his teeth. 

“Leslie?”

“Yeah?”

“Not helping.”

*

Paul’s in class. He won’t be back for another half-hour or so.

Ben double-checks that the door is locked, and grabs the Kleenex. 

*

The message light is blinking when he gets back to his room after class on Friday. 

_“Hi. It’s me. I’m—oh, Ann wants to say hi. I’m having lunch with her. She’s not in Bloomington. I’m in Indianapolis.”_

_“Leslie, I don’t need to—okay. Hi, Ben.”_

_“Okay. That was Ann. Ann says hi. Um, so, um, you still didn’t have weekend plans, right? It’s…what time is it? It’s like 12:30 right now. Ann, how bad do you think traffic is going to be?”_

_“I have no idea.”_

_“Okay. Well, like I was saying, I hope you didn’t make any big plans for this weekend. So, uh, I’m going to finish lunch, and then I’m—”_

There’s a loud beep.

Next message.

_“Hi. It’s me again. Still.”_

_“Leslie, just get it out. Your waffle’s getting cold.”_

_“I’m on my way to Chicago. Like, right now, for the weekend. I’ll be there in—I don’t know. Four hours? Okay? I hope that’s okay. It’s just—well, I’ll tell you when I get there. Oh! If there’s a problem, call Ann and if I can’t get in touch with you, I’ll call her and she’ll relay messages.”_

_“I’m not sitting in my room all afternoon waiting for Ben to call—”_

_“Okay. I’ll see you really soon! I hope. Bye.”_

Ben glances at his right wrist. 3:15. 

Oh god. He only has about an hour. What should he—oh god. Shower? He should shower. And put clean sheets on the bed. If he even has clean sheets. Does he have clean sheets? He pulls the relevant drawer open. Okay. He has clean sheets. Shower first, then sheets, then—

Then he remembers, abruptly—although it’s not like he’s ever forgotten—that this is _Leslie_. 

The shower caddy and the clean sheets can just stay there, right in the middle of the desk. Ben grabs his wallet and keys, and sprints the three blocks to the nearest bakery, because brownies are obviously more important than whether or not he smells okay. 

Okay, there should be time for a shower. Which is probably good, because now he’s all sweaty from running to the bakery.

He’s just shaking his pillow into a clean pillowcase when the phone rings. 

“Hello?”

“Front desk. You have a visitor.” 

He flies downstairs. 

*

“So anyway, my only class today is essay writing—well, you know that—and the instructor canceled it so we’d have more time to finish our first papers, but I turned in a rough draft a week ago and she said it was good enough to get an A already and I didn’t have to turn in a final draft. And that was the only homework I had to do over the weekend, I already did everything else— Ben, stop it, I can carry my own suitcase up the stairs—so I figured I could leave Sunday, like after lunch or something. I hope you don’t have too much homework. Sorry, I probably should’ve asked you instead of just showing up.”

“Just some reading. Not much. It shouldn’t take long.” Or he could not do it, and catch up after class on Monday. He’d be willing to make that sacrifice. 

“Good, ‘cause…”She pauses halfway up the flight of stairs, glances down a little, and bites her lower lip. “I was serious, on the phone. About doing those things.” 

“So this is a booty call?” He feels the corner of his mouth twitch, a little. But also, oh god, _she’s serious_. Really serious. Little fireworks start going off in the back of his mind.

She cringes, and starts back up the stairs. “Ew. It sounds kind of bad when you say it that way.” 

Thank god—thank _god_ —they don’t run into anyone Ben knows on the stairs, because it wasn’t like he was going to start kissing her downstairs at the front desk. And it’s been more than three weeks since he got to kiss Leslie, and that is really far too long to go without kissing her—and now here she is, weeks ahead of schedule, she is _here_ in his dorm, and he loves Paul’s cousin so much for choosing to get married this weekend, Paul’s cousin is his second favorite person in the whole world behind Leslie and why can’t he get the door to unlock? Stupid keys. There. Finally. 

Deep breath. 

“So,” he says, tossing his keys on the desk, next to the brownies, “did you want a tour, or—”

“Of the room?” Leslie glances around, quickly, at the bunk beds, the desks, the dressers, the window. She drops her suitcase in the middle of the floor. Then she kicks off her shoes. “Yours is the top bunk, right?” 

Before he can say yes (he probably doesn’t need to—he’s pretty sure he told her he had the top bunk, and plus his sheets are plaid and her mini-collage is thumbtacked to the wall by the pillow) she’s up there, grinning at him. 

He doesn’t need any encouragement to join her. 

“Your room smells like brownies,” she says, pulling him closer. 

“I got you some.” 

He should probably ask if she wants one now, but no, there is no time at all for brownies; he absolutely needs to be—okay apparently she absolutely needs to be kissing him right now too. And there are her hands, right on schedule. She can never leave her hands still for more than a few seconds at a time, and they always end up traveling all over his upper body. There’s definitely a pattern depending on whether or not he’s wearing a button-down shirt—he is right now, but it isn’t buttoned, and that seems to be confusing her a little bit—or maybe it’s the long sleeves? After all, it was still kind of summer the last time they did this, or at least it was a lot warmer out and he wasn’t wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and what the hell is she trying to do? Unroll his cuffs?

“Take your shirt off,” she hisses, so he sheds the flannel layer as quickly as possible and throws it wherever, because he’s not stupid. Leslie’s cheeks are bright pink—it _is_ kind of hot in here, isn’t it?—and she strips off her Hoosiers sweatshirt. Her hair is still barely long enough to be pulled back, and the ponytail holder slips partway out, and now big chunks of her French braid are flying away and she’s pulling out the braid and…

And she is not wearing an undershirt. 

It takes Ben every ounce of self-control he has not to pounce on her. Deep breath, he tells himself. This shouldn’t be so…exciting. It’s not like he’s never seen her in a bathing suit or anything, he has definitely seen her in a bathing suit, but that was at camp. And, unlike certain other counselors he could name, he and Leslie definitely adhered to the camp’s code of conduct, probably more this last summer than they did when they were fourteen. 

Okay, maybe they had pulled over somewhere or other on most Tuesday afternoons, and maybe they’d been left alone at the Dwyer’s house a couple of times, but they’d both been marginally terrified of being discovered or walked in on or whatever, so even though Ben knows Andy didn’t believe him when he’d grudgingly confessed that they hadn’t gone all the way or even close to all the way yet—well anyway, the point is he _has_ seen her in similar states of undress before. In fact, one time, the weekend between when they got back from camp and when they left for school, she took her bra off for like thirty seconds in the Dwyer’s basement before she thought she heard someone upstairs and panicked and put everything back on, but—

“Ben, I said take your shirt off.” Before he can even register that oh, she meant _both_ his shirts, she’s helpfully trying to peel off his t-shirt herself. He should probably help her with that; the sooner he removes his shirt, the sooner he can investigate Leslie’s bra situation more closely. 

Or not, since the instant that the t-shirt is gone, she knocks him backwards onto the mattress. Something goes _thump_ , maybe his elbow just hit the wall? That was probably it. His elbow hurts now. Dorm bunk beds are maybe not the most ideal for this—god her hands are warm—okay, he should stop thinking about anything other than the fact that Leslie is _straddling him_ and _she isn’t wearing a shirt_ and _she clearly has no intention of slowing down_.

This is probably the best thing that has ever happened. 

“What got into you?” he asks, although it takes a little effort since she is being really enthusiastic about the kissing, right now, like enthusiastic even by Leslie standards. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well—” okay, _that’s_ distracting, her hands keep getting lower and lower—“you’re not usually this, uh…forward?”

Leslie pushes herself more upright, so she’s sort of kneeling over him, and tucks her hair behind one ear. “Sorry. Am I going too fast?” 

“Nope,” he says, quickly. “No. Not at all. That—no. Trust me, that isn’t possible.” She grins, and ducks her head, and good lord she’s good at kissing. She does slow down a little bit, though, which is cool, because it makes it easier for him to investigate the bra situation. 

The bra situation is very favorable. 

He’s allowed to take it off, right? Not right this second, but soon. Very soon, he is going to take it off.

A few minutes later, he reaches behind her and starts fumbling with the strap, or the clasp, or whatever terrible fastening device is keeping him from being able to _really look_ …and touch…okay, he really wants to touch. He’s never really gotten to touch before, or not properly, anyway. 

“Why won’t this damn thing come off?” Ben mutters. He sits up, and Leslie scoots sideways off of him and knocks _her_ elbow into the wall. 

“Ow.”

Oh, shit. Well, so much for being smooth. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay, I’m fine. Here, just let me—”

He shakes his head. “I want to do it.” Obligingly, Leslie shifts around, so he can see her back. This really should not be so difficult, should it? It’s not even a fancy bra, just plain pink cotton with a tiny bit of lace around the top. And the worst, strongest clasp ever. The bra is kind of perfectly Leslie—it’s definitely adorable, and it does very nice things for her, but it also seems like a very _straightforward_ sort of bra—not that Ben knows much (or anything) about bras, but it seems like the kind of bra you’d wear if you had a lot of important stuff to get done, which Leslie always does... 

Not that he really _cares_ about this bra, beyond wanting to get it off, _now_.

“Oh, crap,” she says, suddenly.

“What?” 

“I meant to change.”

“What?” Ben’s listening, of course he’s listening, but most of his attention is still focused on that goddamned clasp—okay, _there_ , finally. Maybe he can go back to trying to be smooth now. He’s supposed to slowly slide the straps off her shoulders, right? That was a lot of words in a row starting with the letter S. Okay, no, there is no chance of him being smooth, not if the thing coming between him and Leslie’s bare breasts is alliteration. 

“I meant to change,” she says, tossing the bra on the floor. 

“Change?” He is very, very distracted. Which would be the best angle—okay, it probably doesn’t matter, all of the angles will be awesome. He shifts around, guiding her so that she’s on her back now, and he can lean over and—

“You’re not really listening, are you?” 

Ben forces himself to close his eyes and take a deep breath. “Sorry. What?” 

“I went up to Indianapolis to see Ann a couple of weeks ago, and we went shopping for…stuff.” 

“Okay?” 

“Like…sexy stuff.” She flushes pink, the same color as that bra she isn’t wearing anymore. “Under—underthings.” 

“Oh.” Well, this is interesting. He sits up a little, and she does the same.

“I was going to put them on before we—you know. Maybe I should go do that now?” 

Good lord, is she really going to—“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“You really want to stop—Leslie, I just took your bra _off_ , and that took a really long time, and now you want to go put another one _on_?”

“It isn’t just—it’s a whole thing. It’s a set. There are panties too. And it’s not just any bra, it’s a really itchy uncomfortable bra—”

“You want to stop so you can go put on an uncomfortable bra that I’m just going to try to take off anyway?” Not try, just take off. He is definitely just going to take it off anyway.

“Well,” she says, biting her lip, “it makes everything look really good. You know—” she gestures—“in the—the chestal region.” 

“Leslie…” He pushes her back down onto the pillow, gently, and kisses her. “Everything looks really good now, in the chestal region.”

“Yeah?” she asks, with a little smile. When he responds by sliding his right hand up her torso and gently taking her nipple between his fingers, she lets out a tiny, honest-to-god moan, which he finds very…pleasing. For once, she stays mostly still, and just lets him explore. 

This is probably the best thing that has ever happened. 

She stays mostly still…for about thirty seconds. Then she wraps her arms around him and yanks him down so fast that his arms give out and he barely, barely manages not to break her nose with his forehead. 

“Sorry,” she whispers, and she rolls out from underneath him. Okay, more shifting—stupid bed, it is way too narrow—and this time, Ben bangs his elbow on the bed railing instead of the wall. 

The view is pretty good from here, too. And now that he’s not propping himself up with one arm, he can use both hands, which is fun. Very fun. Touching Leslie is very, very—good lord, her hands are going into his pants. Okay. This is—

She stops, abruptly, but doesn’t move her fingers, all ten of which are hooked into his waistband. 

“You’re okay if I do this, right?”

“Yes.” He is very, very okay with her doing that. “Why wouldn’t I be okay with it?”

“Just…checking.” 

It would probably help if he took off his belt, at least, so he starts doing that. “Leslie,” he says, “I can’t imagine that there’s any part of this process I’m not going to be okay with.” 

In response, she wrestles the belt out of his hands and yanks it out of the last loop with such force that the buckle smacks into the wall. 

“Oh, crap. Did that leave a mark?”

“Did it?”

“Maybe a tiny one. Right there. Do you see anything?”

He peers at the wall. “Maybe. Does it matter?” He doesn’t care about the wall. 

“I guess not. Unless it counts as damage.” 

“The thumbtacks don’t. It’s no worse than a thumbtack.”

“I guess not,” she agrees. She’s about to drop his belt over the edge of the bed when she suddenly flings it instead, crosses her arms over her chest, and shrieks “Crap on a cookie sheet! Your blinds are open.”

He sits up and twists around. “I doubt anyone can see in,” he says. Sure, there are other buildings out there, but none of them are close enough that other people could see…details.

“I don’t care. Go—will you go close them?” So he climbs out of the bunk and shuts the blinds, which was a dumb idea. It’s kind of dark in here now; he should have turned on the lights first. Except…you’re not supposed to do this with the lights on, are you? He isn’t sure about that.

Leslie sticks her head over the bed railing. “Are you coming back up?”

“Should I turn the lights on?”

“Should you…I don’t know. Do you want them on?”

“I don’t care. Do you?” This is a dumb conversation; Ben doesn’t want to have this conversation. He wants to get back to the part where Leslie is trying to take his pants off. And he wants to take her pants off…yeah, he wants to be able to see.

He turns the lights on and climbs back into bed.

They’re just getting going again when Leslie wonders aloud if they should put music on—“Ann made a mix”—and before he knows it, she’s scrambling down the ladder and digging through her suitcase. 

“Your dorm has a no candles rule, right?” she asks. 

“Yeah.” 

“Damn it.”

“You packed candles?”

“Scented ones.” She finally locates the CD, and starts looking around for the CD player. “For atmosphere, you know? God, I forgot the lingerie, I almost forgot the CD, the windows were open…you still have the condoms I sent you, right?”

“Yeah. They’re hidden in my sock drawer.”

“Well,” she says, popping in the CD, “as long as we’re pausing, you should get them.” 

“Okay.” He climbs down again and digs out the little box. Where to put them for easy access? The bedpost? No, he’d probably just knock them off the bed and then they’d have to stop and start over again, and he does not want that to happen. Finally it occurs to him that they don’t need the whole box, they only need one, so he opens the box and pulls out a single condom. No, better make it two, just in case something goes wrong and they need a backup. Three, maybe. 

Leslie grabs the box out of his hands and pulls out a whole handful of condoms, then balances herself on the lower bunk and slides them under his pillow…along with a whole bunch of other stuff. 

“What is all that?” 

She blushes. “Backup.” 

“I thought you were going to start—does it not start working right away?”

“I did, but…you know, just in case. I haven’t been on it very long. You have to sync it up with your, um, cycle.”

“Oh.” He should probably learn how this stuff works if he’s going to be relying on it. “So is it going to, you know, do what it’s supposed to?”

“It should.”

“And the condoms are backup?”

“Well, I got spermicide too.”

“Do we really need all of those things?” 

“The doctor said the Pill and the condoms should be enough, but I just wanted to…this isn’t a very sexy conversation, is it?” She looks worried, all of a sudden, and vulnerable, so he puts his arms around her and kisses her, and _that_ is pretty sexy, since she is still topless. 

“You’re cute when you’re over-prepared,” he tells her, and this is completely true (and the fact that she’s still topless doesn’t hurt). 

“Music,” she says, and she runs back to the CD player and presses play. 

“So what’s on the CD?” If she really wants to do this to Ani DiFranco or whatever, he’ll go with it, but that really wouldn’t be his first choice.

“I don’t know. Ann wouldn’t tell me. She just said it would set the mood.”

Al Green. Okay, that’s not too bad. Not bad at all.

Back to the fun part, then—although Leslie is a little more subdued now. Does that mean he isn’t doing this right? 

“You okay?” he asks. Maybe he should take his hand off her breast if he’s going to ask her that. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Sure?” He doesn’t want to move his hand.

“Yeah.” She smiles. “Just thinking.” 

“About what?” 

“How cute you are.” 

“Oh.” 

“You should—” she starts, and then she blushes a little, and reaches up to pull him closer and kiss him—“you should go back to what you were doing earlier. I liked that.” 

He is perfectly happy to oblige. And—should he go further? That’s okay, right? Of course it’s okay, he reminds himself; there are condoms and lube under his pillow and they are really, really going to do this and—oh shit she’s cupping him through the outside of his pants. Ben nearly collapses on top of her—but he doesn’t, thank goodness. He just keeps kissing her, harder and faster, and then he kisses her everywhere else, in as many different places as he can think of—behind her ear, down her neck, on her chest—these are things you’re supposed to do, he’s pretty sure, and she _must_ be enjoying it, because she’s making those tiny moans again. 

He _knows_ she’s enjoying it when she suddenly squeezes him—maybe a tiny bit harder than would be ideal—then removes her hands and starts ripping her jeans off. He should help her with that, he should definitely help her with that, it is absolutely crucial that Leslie’s pants get off as quickly as possible. 

“Yours too,” she says, and now she’s tearing at his pants, which are not coming off as easily as he would have hoped, owing to the fact that he is really, really…excited…and the pants are stuck, a little, and he has to maneuver them around somewhat, and Leslie takes advantage of that to peel off her socks. Oh yeah, he should probably take his socks off too, socks are not attractive in the least—and Leslie isn’t waiting for him, she’s just going for it, and he kind of wanted to take the panties off himself but never mind, he doesn’t care—holy shit, Leslie is _naked in his bed_ , and this is probably the best thing that has ever—no, now she’s reaching inside his boxers; _this_ is the best thing that has ever happened.

Now she’s just sort of holding it, and oh god that feels good, but also he wants to look at her because she is _naked in his bed_ , god she’s beautiful, but she’s moving her hand and it is really, really hard to focus on anything other than that. 

“Huh,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting it to feel like that.” 

“Okay?” The part of his brain that can think—it is a very small part, right now—wonders what she thought it was going to feel like.

“Just—never mind.” She lets go (“ _no_ ,” screams the very large part of his brain that cannot think, right now) and tugs his boxers down, then pushes him down on the pillow and lies next to him, in the tiny space between him and the wall. 

Oh god, he hopes she thinks it’s…okay. What if she doesn’t think it’s okay? Then what are they supposed to do? But it must be all right. She’s touching him again, with both hands now, and one hand moves down a little to cradle him, and her hands are so _warm_ , and—

“Is it okay if I do this?”

“Yes.” 

“What about this?” she asks, and she starts sliding her other hand up and down. 

“God, yes.” 

“Okay. Well, Ann said—”

“Leslie—”

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t—please don’t talk about Ann right now.”

“Oh, right. Crap. Sorry.”

And then he has to tell her to just stop, completely, before he loses it. 

Deep breath. Think of something else, something that isn’t—but not totally mood-killing—model trains, maybe? He can think about the model trains in his grandfather’s basement and no, that is not a good idea, model trains are fine but he does not want to think about his grandfather right now. Shit. 

Well, that’s brought him well off the edge, at least. He pushes himself up and scoots Leslie over so she’s in the middle of the pillow. 

“Your turn,” he says. “Ready?” She nods, and he takes another deep breath. “Okay, just, uh—let me know if I’m not doing it right, or—” Leslie is a tiny bit ticklish, he knows that, and she has killer reflexes, and now he’s having a tiny, unbidden vision of accidentally touching her the wrong way and getting an elbow to the face, or something…

And he wants to make this good for her.

So, no pressure or anything. 

He props himself up on one arm, hoping he’ll be able to keep kissing her while he moves his other hand—this should work, right? It seems to be working. Just don’t get too carried away, he tells himself. This is about her, and he needs to keep paying attention to her, to what she likes or doesn’t like, and…

Slowly, he moves his hand lower, pausing to make sure she’s okay—and suddenly, out of nowhere, he mentally flashes on that Monty Python movie, and hears John Cleese in his head, John Cleese is yelling “You don’t have to go leaping straight to the clitoris!” and no, this is not—that is the worst thing he could possibly think right now. He should focus on Leslie, Leslie who is naked in his bed right now and looking up at him with her giant blue eyes. He kisses her, softly, and she closes her eyes and smiles.

“Just go for it,” she says, so he does, he scoots down in the bed and trails his fingers down there, into her dark, neatly trimmed curls. 

“This okay?” he asks, and she nods and whimpers, and holy shit, that’s sexy. 

Right. Time for the tricky part. Ben has an academic knowledge of the female anatomy, of course he does, it’s not like he’s never encountered issues of _Playboy_ or whatever, and he took sex ed, of course he took sex ed. He still isn’t sure he’s completely prepared for this, for touching Leslie, but…

But he touches her anyway, slowly, with one finger at first. She’s warm, and a little slippery, and when he slides his finger around her folds, she groans a little. 

Okay, new goal: get Leslie to make all sorts of noises like that. John Cleese be damned—he’s going to look for it. Or feel around for it, anyway. Well, look and feel simultaneously. That must be it, right there, and—that time she actually grunts, and has some sort of spasm, and that is amazing, that he made her do that—oh god, _he made her do that_ , and it is all he can do not to just—Ben hates the phrase “stick it in,” but that is what he really wants to do right now, she is _so sexy_ and he is _throbbing_ , and he just wants to—model trains, model trains, model trains. In the abstract. Not any specific model trains…

Now, what would happen if he strokes her with one finger and sort of goes inside her with another? That would be okay, right? Like a model train going into a tunnel…no, that is a bad thought about model trains.

She groans again, and this time she actually _pushes against his hand_ , so…it seems okay. Things are getting warmer down there, and…wetter. Yes, that’s good. He will keep doing this. 

Or no, he won’t, because now Leslie’s sitting up, and her eyes are kind of unfocused for a minute. 

“Okay,” she says, a little breathlessly. 

“Okay, what?” 

“Let’s do this.” She reaches under the pillow and flings one of the condoms at him and miraculously, he doesn’t drop it even though his hands are trembling, a tiny bit, as he unrolls the condom and puts it on. Leslie sits up and inspects his work, and then, apparently satisfied that he _does_ know how to put it on, settles herself back on the pillow and reaches up for him. 

“Leslie…” 

“What?”

“Nothing.” _You’re perfect_ , is what he wants to say. 

“Just don’t go too fast,” she says, with a hint of concern, and right, the first time usually hurts for girls, he knows that. 

“Well, tell me if—you know.” Okay, now he feels a little stupid, because he’s over her and he can’t see where he’s supposed to be going and this will be an absolute disaster, if he can’t figure out how to get it in, because getting it in is the whole point—but Leslie just reaches between them and guides him to the appropriate spot. 

And now they’re both groaning, a little, as he slowly pushes himself in. 

Holy shit. 

_This is the best thing that has ever happened._

Ben opens his eyes—he didn’t even realize they were closed—and he can’t tell, exactly, if she’s—

“Are you—is this—” There is probably no way he is going to be able to form a complete sentence right now.

She grimaces a little, but she kisses him. “It hurts a little, but it’s okay. Keep going.” 

“Are you sure? I don’t want—not if it hurts.” 

She kisses him again, and wriggles underneath him a little. “Just go. It feels good.” 

“You just said it hurts.”

“It also feels really good. Seriously, Ben, go. I want you to. Just not too fast.” 

“Okay…” he says, uncertainly, but she smiles, and starts making out with him again, and then he pulls away a tiny bit because he wants to look at her, god she’s pretty, and it must not hurt as much because now she’s closing her eyes and moaning again, and muttering something, he can’t quite make out what it is, and holy shit, he is having sex with Leslie Knope. Her eyes flutter open, and there’s a tiny, devilish gleam in them. Then she clenches herself around him—dear god he did _not_ know that was possible—and that’s it, he’s gone, there go the fireworks. 

She lets him stay collapsed on top of her, for a little bit—he can’t think of anything anyway, his brain is just kind of buzzing—then she mutters something about needing to take it off before it leaks, and oh right, he’s definitely…going flaccid, and he should get cleaned up. 

Which is a little awkward since he has to climb up and down the bunk bed ladder with towels and tissues and—and whatever. 

“Remind me to take out the trash before Paul gets back.” 

She grins. “Well, don’t do it now,” she says. “I’m gonna be here for a couple more days. Might as well just make one trip at the end.”

Back to kissing her, then. With no clothes on. 

“You are amazing.”

“So are you.”

Ben shakes his head. “I doubt that.”

“No, that was—that was pretty awesome.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t…you know. Did you?”

“No,” she says, trailing her hand over his chest, “but that’s okay. I didn’t expect to the first time. It’s, you know…it’s harder for girls.”

This hardly strikes him as fair. 

“Well,” he says, shifting so he’s back over her, “I know what my goal for the weekend is.” 

She smiles at that, and god, she is so, so—

Starting now. He’s going to start working on that goal right now.

“Ben? Where are you going?”

He thought that was obvious. “Um, to try to get you to, you know—why, do you not want me to?”

She shakes her head a little. “No, of course I want you to.”

“Okay then.”

“I just—I thought you’d fall asleep right away afterwards. That’s what…” 

She doesn’t pick the sentence back up, but Ben’s going to assume that it would have been something like _That’s what Ann says happens when guys finish_. He really doesn’t need to follow up on that one. God knows he heard creaking bedsprings followed by Andy snoring enough times last spring. 

All he says is “Nope.” 

Mission: Make Leslie…You Know gets off to kind of a rough start, not because Ben has no real idea what he’s doing—well he doesn’t, but it seems like the sort of thing that would be pretty easy to figure out once you get started, if you’re paying attention. 

No, the problem is that she either can’t relax, or won’t. Probably the latter. 

He’s just going to concentrate on this, and pretend she isn’t asking a billion questions since he is _obviously_ not capable of answering them right now, what with his face parts being…otherwise engaged.

“Wait, have you done this before? I know you said you hadn’t, but—sorry, I know you wouldn’t lie to me. Or—oh, that feels good, do that. Now I forgot what I was going to say.”

Okay, this has to stop. “Leslie, you’re not supposed to be saying anything right now.”

“I know, but this feels weird.”

“Well, do you want me to stop?”

“No.” 

“Okay. Stop thinking about stuff, then.”

“How?”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to stop thinking about stuff.”

He groans. “I know. Just…just try, okay? Or think about something like…I don’t know. Think about waffles.”

“Waffles?”

“Sure. Why not waffles?”

She doesn’t seem to have an answer for that, so he gets back to work, and there, there’s the moan, he’s making progress here—

“But what if I start thinking about _this_ every time I eat a waffle?”

“So think of something else. Think of…the Declaration of Independence.”

Silence. For exactly the length of time it would take to recite _When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation_ out loud, and then—

“But what if I start thinking about this every time I read the Declaration?”

Oh god. Maybe he should ignore her talking. If he does this really well, she’ll have no choice but to relax, right?

There she goes. Spasm. Good. Good sign. 

“Sorry. Did I—”

“Leslie. Stop talking and relax, seriously.”

“Okay.”

This time she makes it about forty-five seconds, by his count, before…

“Ben?” He isn’t going to answer. “What does it taste like?”

Oh god. The honest answer is a combination of latex condom and the lube that was on it, mostly, but he doesn’t think she needs to know that.

“Leslie, seriously, I really think this would go better if you _stopped talking_.”

“I know,” she says, in a tiny voice. “Sorry. It—it really does feel good.”

He gets her close—close, but not _quite_ —before she gets sore and tells him to stop. He really hopes she isn’t just saying that, trying to spare his feelings…

“It was really, really great,” she says, pulling him back up for a kiss. “But I do need to stop. For now.” 

“Okay.”

“Oh and you should probably brush your teeth before we go anywhere.”

Good call. 

*

They eat two brownies each and then head out to Paul’s favorite deep dish pizza joint, where Leslie expresses her frustration at the tomatoes being on top of the cheese, “because that’s backwards and weird, even Eagleton puts the toppings on in the right order,” but she grudgingly admits that it tastes good even if it does kind of require a knife and fork.

*

And then she’s ready to go again. 

Ben is not going to complain, especially not when it turns out she has an actual list of things she wants to try doing to him (“in my head, I didn’t write this one down, are you crazy?”) and okay, she can do very wonderful things with her mouth.

He gets her closer. Not all the way. But closer. 

These dorm beds are really not designed for two people to sleep in (hell, they’re barely designed for one person to sleep in), but that’s okay. They’ve never gotten to spend the night together before and Ben would probably be okay with sleeping on a bed of nails, if Leslie was going to be in the bed with him. She snuggles up against him and whispers “I love you” and surprisingly, she falls asleep almost at once—he’s pretty sure that almost never happens—and he doesn’t even care that her hair keeps tickling his nose. He is, oddly enough, kind of tired, and falls asleep not long after she does.

Leslie sleeps for precisely four and a half hours, and normally Ben is not a fan of waking up before five in the morning, but something feels weird (good, but weird) and when he opens his eyes she’s on top of him and holy shit—

“Leslie?”

“Yeah?” 

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean, what’s going on?”

“Are we having sex right now?”

“Yeah. Of course we are.” Okay, this is probably the best thing that has ever happened, but…

“How?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“Well, I was asleep.”

She stops moving. “You were?”

“Until very recently, yes.” 

“Whoops,” she says, blushing a little. “Well, you were responding. I thought you were awake.”

“Responding how?”

“I don’t know. I started kissing you and you were kissing back, so…” She shrugs, grins, and keeps going.

This time he does fall asleep right afterwards. He hopes she’ll forgive him but it _is_ only five in the morning, and...

*

Saturday is for a brief tour of campus, and museums, and extensive arguments about which dinosaurs were the coolest dinosaurs, and waffles for breakfast and for lunch (for Leslie, anyway). Then there’s a brief trip to Marshall Field’s to get Frango mints for Ann, and walking around State Street, and hot dogs. The hot dogs turn out to not be the best idea, what with all the onions, but of course Leslie has not one but three varieties of mouthwash in her suitcase.

This time she disappears into the girls’ bathroom with a whole bunch of stuff wrapped in a towel, and returns wearing the sexy underthings under her sweatshirt.

The sexy underthings are indeed sexy, but Ben kind of likes the plain cotton bra and panties better. The sexy underthings seem like they’re trying too hard, and Leslie doesn’t need that, she is absolutely the most sexually attractive woman on the planet (has he not made this perfectly clear? Surely he has made this perfectly clear) without the benefit of itchy uncomfortable underwear.

He really just wants to take them off. Which is kind of the point of the sexy underthings, he knows that, but…they’re kind of in the way. 

He has a mission to accomplish, after all. 

This time he’s going to do it, first thing, before they do anything else. Leslie seriously tests his resolve by trying very, very hard to take his boxers off, which he finds immensely flattering—but no, it’s definitely her turn. He’s got to be getting better at this, right? She’s gotten closer every time—unless she’s faking it, of course, but she wouldn’t do that—at least he hopes not. 

This time, he doesn’t try to adjust based on what she’s doing, just keeps a steady rhythm, stays patient, waits for her. It takes longer for the spasms and the soft little noises to start, but they do, and he doesn’t change anything, just keeps going—

And suddenly she’s _there_ , and it is amazing. Possibly the most amazing thing he’s ever seen, and _he made her do that_ , and he is _immensely_ pleased with himself. 

As is Leslie, when she finally stops shaking. Or Ben thinks she is. For once, she actually seems to be speechless.

“Okay?” he asks, grinning at her. She groans, and waves him up to the pillow, and before he can even settle himself down she just sort of buries herself in his chest, and he bangs his elbow on the wall again, but he really doesn’t care. 

This is _definitely_ the best thing that has ever happened.

She makes him do it two more times before she leaves on Sunday afternoon. 

She still won’t let him carry her suitcase to her car. He does get to carry the bag with Ann’s Frango mints, though.

“Are you still coming up for Columbus Day?” he asks, as he watches her try to wedge the suitcase into her trunk.

“Here,” she says, handing him a grocery bag. “Hold these.”

“You still have stuff to make s’mores in your car?”

“Always,” she says. “What? I can’t keep it in my dorm room. Someone might try to steal it. And yes, I am definitely coming up for Columbus Day.”

“So I wasn’t that bad, then.”

“Don’t get too cocky. You could use more practice.”

“Oh, well, there are those cute girls down the hall…”

“If they so much as lay a finger on you, I’ll—I’ll wave their decapitated heads on sticks in front of their mothers.”

He blinks. “Good lord.”

“Okay,” she says, quietly. “That might have been too much.”

“Yeah, just a little.” He throws Ann’s Frango mints in the front seat, and pulls Leslie in for a kiss. “I still love you, though.” 

“Love you too.”

*

Columbus Day weekend is way, way too far away.


	14. Deleted Scene #1: "That Could Be Fun"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> April POV, summer camp. Set during Chapter 6.

_This is boring_ , April thinks. Shauna and Jess are still in the rec building, content with another morning of arts and crafts, but April’s had enough of lanyards and friendship bracelets and collages, and—although she isn’t going to admit it—Shauna and Jess. They’re the only girls in her bunk who aren’t awful, so she doesn’t hate them, but they’ve been at camp for almost _two weeks_. How much time are you supposed to spend with the same people, anyway? 

Orin’s nowhere. She would hang out with Orin, but he’s nowhere. Which usually means he’s in the woods, looking for dead stuff. That’s gotten boring too. 

She could read a book, but Tammy’s guarding the reading room, and while April isn’t scared of her the way most of the other girls are, she doesn’t feel like going back to the rec building. Shauna and Jess are up there, being best friends without her, and why should she see them like that?

So she flops under a tree, spies a nearby anthill, and starts poking it with a stick. 

Only two more hours until baseball, and then at least she’ll get to hit stuff with a bat. 

Summer is lame. Being in Pawnee for the summer would be lame too, but at least if she was at home, she’d have air conditioning and television. There’s too much _outside_ at summer camp. 

Also, camp is boring. 

“Hey, Ludgate!” booms a voice behind her. April doesn’t react. “Ludgate. April. April Ludgate. C’mon, I know you can hear me.” 

It’s Andy. “Yeah, I can hear you,” she mutters. “So what?” Talking to the older boys is always weird, especially since most of them seem to go out of their way to pretend the younger kids don’t exist. It makes sense; if she was fourteen, she’d ignore the ten-year-olds too. Ben doesn’t, but she’s sure that’s only because he’s keeping an eye on Jess or whatever. 

And Andy doesn’t. She can’t figure out why Andy doesn’t ignore them. Whatever. She’ll just keep staring at this anthill. 

“Whatcha up to?” Andy asks. 

She shrugs. “Nothing. I’m bored.”

“Dude. Don’t be bored!” Finally, April looks up at him, and he’s actually smiling. Jeez, what’s wrong with him? No one should be this happy to be at camp. 

“Camp is boring.”

“I betcha I can make it not boring.” When she doesn’t react, he crouches next to her and gives her a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Come on. Come help me with this thing.” 

And April has no idea why she’s doing this—maybe because Andy didn’t phrase his statement as a question—but she suddenly finds herself on her feet, following him, struggling to keep up because he’s like two feet taller than she is. 

She hesitates when they reach cabin six. She’s never been in the boys’ cabins before, not that it should be such a big deal or anything, but it’s kind of a big deal. 

“April’s helping,” Andy announces to the cabin. April peers through the door. Darwish and J.R. are assembling a small pile of stuff on one of the bunks, and Ben’s up in his bed, reading. 

“That’s cool, that’s cool,” says J.R., but April’s not really sure he’s even aware she’s standing there. 

Darwish looks a little dismayed. “Dude. You’re bringing the little kids into this? How are we supposed to look like major players if—”

“Naw, April’s cool,” says Andy. He gives her a wink—a big, exaggerated wink—and for some reason, she feels like those ants she was just disturbing are crawling around inside her stomach. Weird. Why does the idea of helping suddenly sound like it could be fun? Quickly, she drops her gaze to her feet. 

J.R. shrugs, and before April knows it, she’s been dragged into the cabin and ordered to roll up one of the spare sleeping bags while J.R. and Darwish begin arguing about centerpieces.

The sleeping bag is dumb, though. Why does she have to roll it up? Does she look like a Girl Scout or something? She doesn’t know how to do this. 

“Oh, hey, I’ll help,” Andy offers, and together, they manage to squish the bag into a lumpy cylinder. 

“So you guys take that out to the spot with the candy. Andy, you have that, right?” 

“Right here,” he says, holding up a bag of LifeSavers, which he promptly drops on the floor. “Oh, shoot.” 

“And then you’ll come back for the guitar, and—”

“Seduction complete,” says J.R., and he and Darwish high-five.

At that, Ben groans, slams his book shut, and leans over the bed railing. “You guys know this isn’t going to work, right?” 

Darwish shakes his head. “Ben, forgive me for saying this, but you have _no idea_ what girls like.”

“What’s going on?” April mutters, not really expecting anyone to hear.

“Picnic,” explains Andy. “We’re helping Darwish and J.R. set up a picnic, to attract girls.” 

Ben rolls his eyes and opens his book again. It’s a huge book, April notices. And it’s not like everyone doesn’t claim their older brothers are lame—everyone April knows who has an older brother claims he’s lame—but Jess was really right. “Not gonna work,” he repeats.

“You don’t know that, man!”

“No, I do know that. Which girls are you trying to attract, exactly? Because Ann’s with Chris, and Lindsay’s into Mark, and Donna terrifies you both, and Joan’s awful, and you know it’s not going to work with Marcia, and Leslie—” He turns red, suddenly, and holds the book over his face.

Now that was slightly interesting. 

“We might attract Lindsay!” Darwish protests. “Or Leslie. If she’s not with Mark. Is she with Mark?”

Andy shakes his head. “I really don’t think she is. Hey, I thought you didn’t like Leslie like that anyway.”

“I don’t,” says Darwish. “But the girl has friends, doesn’t she?”

J.R. just shrugs. “Leslie’s kind of fly.” 

Leslie’s not with Mark. Don’t the boys know _anything_? April thought the older kids were supposed to be smarter. She watches Ben for a moment. He’s completely rigid, except for his left knee, which is twitching kind of violently. 

“You guys go set up,” Darwish says. “Fix up the blanket and stuff while we get dressed.”

It’s a dumb plan, April thinks. Ben might be lame, but he’s right, they’re not going to attract any of the older girls with a picnic. But she finds herself spreading the sleeping bag out just so, anyway, in a quiet spot down by the swimming beach—chosen, she suspects, so that any girls who are convinced to come over will be wearing bathing suits—while Andy, perched on a nearby tree stump, tries to play some Beatles song on his guitar. The song is dumb, but Andy’s pretty good.

This isn’t the most boring thing that’s ever happened at camp, especially not after Jess and Shauna wander over with a pack of Uno cards and a couple of other girls from their cabin. They’re midway through a second game (April’s winning; she always wins) when J.R. and Darwish finally show up, wearing dumb boyband outfits or something. 

“Oh, no. No. No,” says Darwish, and he starts trying to shoo them off the sleeping bag. “This isn’t the plan.”

April shrugs, and pops a cherry LifeSaver into her mouth. “We were here first.” 

“Andy! You were supposed to—to—”

But Andy just shrugs and grins. “Ludgate here has a point.” He plays a couple more chords. They almost sound like real chords. “They were here first.” 

The corner of her mouth turns upwards, for half a second. Then she regains control, pokes her tongue into the center of her LifeSaver, and throws a Wild Draw Four on the pile. 

Shauna’s so screwed. 

Later that night, their cabin plays their millionth game of MASH.

“April’s turn,” Shauna announces. She’s got her dumb little notebook out like always. “April, name a guy.”

And usually April refuses to play, or if no one listens to her refusing, she says _some old guy with weird eyebrows_ , or _Bart Simpson_ , or sometimes _Ben_ , since that always makes Jess freak out. But tonight she just shrugs and says, “Andy, I guess.”


	15. Deleted Scene #2: "Letters"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during the beginning of Part 1 of the epilogue.

It’s over. The first full month of high school is over, and right up until today’s bus ride home, it was surprisingly…not awful. Or at least, Ben hasn’t embarrassed himself in any of the ways he’d anticipated possibly happening. He hasn’t spilled anything on himself, tripped in front of everyone, gotten food stuck in his teeth, lost a contact lens, or hit his head on any lockers (why this has been an ongoing fear, he has no idea). He hasn’t said anything stupid in any classes, or walked into a homeroom that wasn’t his. On the first day back, he’d even managed to say hi to Katie Cooper without it being too weird. (It was still weird, but considering how weird it _could_ have been—after all, he _had_ been a total idiot the last time they’d talked—it really wasn’t weird at all.) 

In fact, the whole month has been kind of great. 

Until today, today’s bus ride home, the never-ending bus ride that loops them back and forth, all over the southern half of the county, miles and miles of looping, before it winds up nearly right back where it started. Ben lives about fifteen minutes from school, but for some reason he’s on the end of the route, and the bus ride takes over an hour. 

Today, he’s slumped in a seat towards the back, just behind Steve and Cindy. 

They weren’t dating this morning. They’re dating now. They’re back together and it’s all _no, I like you more_ and _let’s get ice cream tomorrow_ , with hand-holding and giggling and as much smooching as you can get away with on the bus. 

By the time Steve gets off the bus, Ben has the distinct impression that he’s been invited to be a third wheel at the movies this weekend. He also has the distinct impression that he agreed to go, for reasons unknown to the conscious, functional, non-masochistic part of his brain. 

He shifts a little, trying to find some way to sit comfortably on the sticky brown vinyl, and stares out the window for a while. Cindy’s reflection is visible—she’s picking at her nail polish—but he’s not really looking at her, or at his own reflection, or at the used car dealerships on the outskirts of town; he’s looking at the empty spot reflected on the seat beside him, and imagining blonde pigtails. 

“Ben?”

He jerks upright. “Hmm?”

“Are you listening?” Cindy’s turned around now, leaning over the back of the seat. 

“Yeah. Sorry. I spaced out for a minute.”

Cindy rolls her eyes. “I said, if you want, I can bring someone for you.” 

He blinks. “You what?” 

“Oh, my god, you’re so oblivious.”

“Sorry, I missed something—”

“Ben, more than one—you know what, forget it,” she says, with an exaggerated sigh. “I’m just going to invite a bunch of people, and laugh at you when you can’t figure out that you’re supposed to talk to them.”

“What?” He still feels like he’s missing something, here. 

The bus screeches to a bumpy halt, and Cindy somehow gets up while the bus is stopping, gracefully, without losing her balance.

“We’ll get you a girlfriend eventually,” she tells him, snorting a little through a stifled laugh. “I’ll make it my personal mission.”

“You…don’t have to do that.” 

She doesn’t say anything in response. Just grins and winks as she heads off the bus. And the bottom drops out of Ben’s stomach, a little. Not because of Cindy, exactly, but because he’s remembering another grin and another wink, and because Cindy’s backpack is the exact same shade of purple that Leslie was wearing on the last day of camp, and…

And he needs to get a grip on himself.

Ben hasn’t told any of his friends about Leslie. Not really. Oh, sure, he told Steve that there were girls at camp, and yeah, some of them were cute, and no, his summer wasn’t terrible. But Steve, true to form, has connected exactly zero of those dots, and Ben sure as hell isn’t going to help him do so. 

The bus lurches on, back into town, past the calzone stand and the single bench behind the town hall parking lot, and everything in Partridge is exactly the way it was before the summer. 

Except he’s different. Sort of.

Which he ought to be happy about, considering what a disaster he’d felt like last spring. 

By the time the bus pulls up to his block, there’s a big red mark on his forehead from where he’s leaned into the window, clutching at the absurd hope that maybe the bus is some sort of portal and eventually, if he pushes hard enough, he’ll fall through the window and be deposited back at camp, or in Pawnee, or the window will tip open and Leslie will fall out. 

So yeah, he should probably go be a third wheel at the movies this weekend. 

He goes.

It’s not awful. Cindy’s rounded up pretty much the same group from last year, so if he’s a third wheel then so are a bunch of other people, and he only resents, a tiny bit, that Steve and Cindy are doing that exaggerated gross _oh I didn’t know you were reaching for popcorn at the same time I was_ thing, and there’s a specific person Ben wants to do that thing with, but she’s hundreds of miles away and no one knows she exists and…

And she’d probably point out the inefficiency of such a popcorn-eating system, split the bag’s contents in two, then say “You eat with your left hand and I’ll eat with my right,” and she’d take his right hand in her left, and…stop it, stop it, stop it. 

When he gets home, he finds a letter from her on his desk. 

“Knock, knock,” says his mom, opening the door without bothering to _actually_ knock. “Dinner’s in twenty minutes.” 

“Okay.” 

She glances at the letter. “I hid that from Jess.” 

“Thanks.” That is a relief, in fact, since Jess has only just stopped teasing him about the photo album.

“Don’t thank me now. You can thank me by doing the dishes.” 

“I always do the dishes,” Ben points out, but she’s already gone. He locks the door behind her, waits for a few moments with his ear pressed to the door, to make absolutely certain she isn’t going to come back, and collapses on his bed with the letter. 

_Dear Ben (hey, I can write your name in letters now! Ha),_

_Hi! I’m not going to bother asking how you are, or anything, because that’s boring, and besides, you already know I want to know that. So I’m just going to jump right in here. First of all, I know your birthday’s coming up soon. Is it weird if I get you a present? I already have one picked out—just a small thing—but Ann says it would be weird if I sent you a birthday present. And I guess she’s right. But. Birthday presents are awesome, so why wouldn’t you want me to send you one? Also, just so you know, I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty great at giving presents. But it’s up to you. But I hope you don’t think I wouldn’t at least send a card. I’m definitely going to send you a card. Oh, and I’m supposed to tell you that Andy says hi._

_I’m not writing just to ask you if you want a birthday present, though. I just got back from the first real meeting of my environmentalist club, and it was super exciting. So I have to tell somebody, but my mom’s tired of hearing about it already (I told her on the drive home), and Ann was there with me—I don’t think she really wanted to go, but she’s a good sport, and besides, it’s been three weeks and she hasn’t picked out any extracurriculars yet, so this was good for her, I think. Anyway, that means you get to hear about it! Plus, this is a fun fact, Ron is one of our leaders! He just got hired as the new shop teacher. I’m not really sure how much he cares about environmentalism, but he does know an awful lot about trees. Well, wood, but wood comes from trees, after all. And that’s what we were doing today, planting trees._

_Did I ever tell you about Ramsett Park? It’s our best park, or it would be since it’s the biggest park, but it’s also kind of the grossest park. Part of that is because the trash cans keep getting stolen, so the park needs a lot of extra litter cleanup, and part of that is because of the raccoons. I kind of suspect that the raccoons are the ones stealing the trash cans, but no one’s been able to catch them at it yet. The raccoons are the reason why we don’t plant trees in the spring, like most environmentalist clubs do—it’s flat-out dangerous to be in Ramsett Park during mating season._

_You might be wondering why we were even planting trees in a raccoon-infested area, since raccoons love trees so much. And the answer to that is, we’re actually _replacing_ trees. Earlier this year, the environmentalist club (well, mostly Ron, I think) cut down a whole bunch of trees, mostly oaks. It was kind of a shame, but oaks get tree hollows, you know? And raccoons can sleep in those. But the bark on beech trees is too slippery for them to climb. So the hope is, if we can shift the percentages of trees a little bit, we can keep the raccoons confined to the back half of the park, away from the baseball fields. _

_I wasn’t able to take a camera today, since I don’t have my own (Mom promised me one for Christmas), so I couldn’t take any pictures of the trees I helped plant (I helped plant more than anybody), but they all looked pretty much alike since they were all beeches. And Ann forgot her camera. On purpose, I think. I swear, if she starts trying to be cool, like Lindsay did…well, okay, no, that’s not going to happen. Ann doesn’t have to try._

_Anyway, you’re probably tired of reading about trees and raccoons, so I’ll stop now. Let me know about the birthday present, and how school is going, and all those things. And I’m not going to tell you I miss you, because we promised we wouldn’t do that, but…well, I’ll just say I think you would’ve had fun planting trees with us today, how about that?_

_Love,  
Leslie_

_P.S. Let me know about the birthday present! I lied earlier. I actually already bought you something. But if the idea is too weird, I can return it._

_P.P.S. But I am really awesome at gifts. Just ask Ann._

_P.P.P.S. Don’t ask Ann since she’s the one who said it would be weird if I got you something._

Good lord, he misses her. 

He’s just about to start composing a response, starting with _No, I don’t think birthday presents are too weird_ (because he’s sure Leslie’s right; he can’t imagine anyone more likely to be awesome at gifts) when he remembers he’s supposed to be getting over her.

God damn it. 

And then his mom’s yelling up the stairs that dinner is ready, and he has to go down to the kitchen and try to be pleasant about meatloaf, and do the dishes and act like he’s not completely miserable. 

Which he isn’t, actually. He just…would be happier if they lived in Indiana instead of Minnesota. Or if Leslie lived in—no, that’s not logically possible; he can’t imagine her in Partridge. She’d never leave Pawnee. 

“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” remarks his mother, and he shrugs and mutters something about math homework in response, which turns out to be a poor cover story, since it inspires Jess to snort and call him a dork.

When he’s finally back upstairs, with his door securely locked, he pulls Leslie’s photo album out of his desk drawer and allows himself to look at her, just for a little while. 

The first response he begins composing in his head opens with _Dear Leslie, This is embarrassing, but every time I see a girl with blonde hair I get upset she isn’t you_ , which, good lord. 

Dwelling, he knows, is not healthy. And with that thought, he puts the photo album away and turns on his radio. But whatever music comes out of the speakers isn’t loud enough to drown her voice out of his head. 

Damn it. 

_Friendly, that’s all_ , he tells himself, and _She would buy birthday presents for anybody. She’s probably writing Darwish letters too_.

He knows she isn’t. 

Finally he just puts pencil to paper. 

_Dear Leslie,_ he starts. 

_No, I don’t think a birthday present would be too weird..._

He drops his completed letter in the mailbox before school on Monday.

During lunch on Tuesday, Ben dimly becomes aware that he is having a birthday party this weekend whether he likes it or not. “Really more just hanging out,” Cindy assures him, reading the look of absolute horror on his face. “No pressure.” 

“Great,” he says, torn between feeling certain that fifteen is too old for parties and feeling grateful that everyone remembered. 

On Wednesday, he returns home to find a small package on his desk, and a postcard of some sweaty Olympic athletes on top of the package. He flips the postcard over first. _“If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then the first step in discovering your genius is drinking enough water.” What do you think, Ben? I would hate to encourage anyone to embark on some sort of personal quest without being properly hydrated._ His mom’s stuck a Post-It over the address: _Are you sure you don’t want to invite this kid to visit next summer?_

He throws the postcard in his wastepaper basket without a second thought, and opens the package, not really knowing what he’s hoping for here. A small, soft bundle falls out, wrapped in paper with a tree print. Trees? Seriously? There’s a card taped to the bundle, which he opens first.

_Dear Ben,_

_Happy birthday! I’m sorry if you were going to tell me this was too weird, but I decided I was overthinking the whole present thing and I was just going to send it to you anyway. So here it is. It’s not much, I know, but…well, happy birthday again._

_Leslie_

Jess throws the door open, without the benefit of knocking, enters without waiting for an invitation, and flings herself on his bed. “Is that from Leslie?” she asks. 

“Yeah.”

“So she’s still your girlfriend.”

“No,” he says. “She’s not. Why are you in here?”

“Open it.” 

What if it’s something embarrassing? “It’s not my birthday yet.” 

Jess rolls her eyes. “Who cares? Open it anyway.” 

Yeah, okay. He’s the older sibling here; if Jess decides to be annoying about this present, he’ll find some way to get back at her. He tears open the wrapping paper. It’s a t-shirt for the Indianapolis Indians—not even something to do with Pawnee—and it’s probably two sizes too big.

“Huh,” Jess says, sounding disappointed. “That’s boring.” 

It does, in fact, look like something their aunt would send him as a birthday present. 

But it’s from Leslie.

Which means it’s really the most thoughtful thing she could send him, right? It’s a _friend_ present, not a _boyfriend_ present. It’s not an _I secretly wish we were still dating_ present, or an _I don’t want you to get over me_ present, and even if Ben wishes wholeheartedly that they were still dating and Leslie wasn’t probably already over him...

Of course Leslie’s better than that. And she’s right. And he needs to move on. 

“I like it,” he says, firmly, and he rips off the tag with his teeth. 

His mom manages to shrink it a tiny bit in the dryer, and he wears it to the party or whatever it is on Saturday, calzones and video games in Steve’s basement, which they do every Saturday, and the only difference this time is that there are a whole bunch of girls, too. In particular, Cindy and her new friend Melissa show up with a misshapen and badly decorated cake that they apparently spent the afternoon making. 

Ben barely knows who Melissa is—she went to the other county middle school and they don’t have any classes together, so he’s spoken to her maybe twice at lunch—but Cindy raises an eyebrow at him and cocks her head. 

He’s pretty sure his face turns bright red at that point. _Seriously?_ Because Melissa’s not bad-looking, not at _all_ , and she seems nice enough, and if she’s friendly with Cindy then she’s probably popular, which means she could do better. 

And she went to the other middle school. Right. Which means she doesn’t know him very well either, doesn’t know about the recently jettisoned glasses and braces and…god he still doesn’t want to think about the end of middle school. But she wouldn’t know, not unless Cindy told her, which he’s guessing she hasn’t. 

In a weird way, that takes some of the pressure off. 

The cake, quite frankly, is terrible—dry and spongy with sickeningly sweet canned frosting—but he manages to choke down a piece anyway, and when Melissa self-deprecatingly says it wasn’t very good, he lies and says no, it was, and hopes she didn’t notice he had to spit out a piece of eggshell. 

She smiles, and looks at her feet. 

Later that evening, Ben finds himself perched on an arm of the ancient sofa, watching Steve attempt to make it through the ice world in _Super Mario 3_ (Steve has always sucked at the ice worlds), with Melissa wedged into the seat next to him. When she passes him a bowl of chips, and their hands brush, that’s all it is. Just the corner of her hand against his, a tiny bit of friction with no excitement behind it, nothing compelling him to prolong the contact. 

So he doesn’t ask her to the fall dance, and he doesn’t care when she starts going out with a sophomore two weeks later (in fact, it’s a relief, because she’s been sitting next to him at lunch a lot and he has no idea what to do about that), and he goes to the homecoming game with the usual group but no specific date, and he’s fine with that. Nicole—she’s in his history class—disappears to the concession stand, and returns with a soda for him that he didn’t ask for, and offers to share her popcorn, and he barely, _barely_ manages not to drop anything or stutter incoherently or wonder, aloud, what the hell is going on. 

When he answers Leslie’s request for “a thorough and accurate account of all your school’s homecoming traditions,” which arrives inside a Halloween card, he leaves out the part about the soda, and also the part where he may or may not have agreed to go on a group ice skating date with Nicole as soon as the skating pond freezes over. (There’s really no way to explain that last part, since he has no idea what he did or didn’t agree to do. He just hopes the pond never freezes over, so he doesn’t have to find out.)

Ben finds himself in the Waldenbooks a couple of weekends after homecoming, and although he typically heads straight back to the sci-fi section, for some reason, this time, he swings past the history section instead. There’s a display at the end of one shelf, a moderately sized, newly-published paperback about the history of Minnesota’s female pioneers, with a few complimentary reviews quoted on the front cover. 

He picks up a copy. And a birthday card. 

Well, he would’ve sent Leslie a birthday present even if she hadn’t sent him one. And so what if her birthday isn’t until January?

And so what if he fakes being sick on the Saturday after the skating pond freezes over?

“Feeling better?” Cindy asks on Monday, with a little edge to her voice that suggests she knows perfectly well he wasn’t really sick. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles. 

She gives him one of her patented exaggerated groans. “You do _like_ girls, don’t you?” 

They go skating again the next weekend, and he makes a point of grabbing Nicole’s hand in front of everybody, just to prove…something, he isn’t sure what. It’s cold; they’re wearing gloves, this doesn’t actually count as touching or anything. 

When he gets home, there’s a Thanksgiving card from Leslie on his desk. _Thanksgiving card_? He didn’t know those existed. But inside the envelope is glossy, folded paper with a roast turkey and several ears of corn on the front. _Pawnee corn_ , according to big red letters on the back of the card, whatever that means. 

_Dear Ben,_

_I know, I know—Thanksgiving isn’t really a greeting card occasion, but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to write to you…_

He gives up, although whether he’s giving up on Leslie, Nicole, or himself is anyone’s guess.


	16. Deleted Scene #3: "The Meagle Mystique"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donna POV, set during Part 1 of the epilogue. Features a special celebrity cameo!

Donna’s main problem with middle school had been that the men were boys. Actual boys.

This, it turns out, is also Donna’s problem with high school. The men are still boys. Now, she may only be just-about-to-turn-fifteen, but she is a _woman_. Don’t think she hasn’t considered trying her luck at the community college, because she has, but Donna’s smart enough to know that statutory rape is an undesirable thing; besides, the males who attend PCC are unquestionably also boys. Like her brother Levondrious. Fool. 

And don’t think she’s about to settle. She isn’t. 

Within two weeks after their freshman year has started, Donna has become the most desirable, mysterious, unattainable lady in _any_ grade. As the weeks go on? 

Well, by Thanksgiving, the Meagle Mystique has become almost legendary.

She accepts about half of the party invitations she receives, accepts two-thirds of the offers to buy her drinks and snacks at school sporting events, and completely refuses to sit at the popular kids’ lunch table. That does not work with the Meagle Mystique.

(The popular girls do _not_ know how to eat. Lunch is best taken with a) the guys or b) Leslie, who always has extra brownies.)

In fact, Donna has only one thorn in her side. A buzzing stick insect who looks electrocuted half the time, dresses like an actual clown, and who has the _audacity_ to _rap at her_. 

Donna is not a woman of regrets. However, she very much regrets getting bored enough that one time at summer camp to make the Q-Tip think he _ever_ had a chance with her. 

Unfortunately, J.R. is proving remarkably tenacious. Unfortunately, he is just smart enough to have figured out that even Donna needs to visit the ladies’ room on occasion. Unfortunately, he’s figured out enough of her class schedule to be able to predict which ladies’ room Donna is most likely to be visiting. Unfortunately, J.R. has nothing better to do with his life than wait for her to emerge from said ladies’ room.

“Donna Meagle, what up?” 

She glares. “Shut it.” 

“No biggie, no biggie. We’re cool.” 

Such is her life. Daily. 

Leslie has offered to talk to him, or to get Ann to talk to him, but Donna shakes her head each time the offer is made. 

“I do not,” she says, “need you to do my dirty work for me. The Meagles handle their own affairs.” And she means it. And she’s been handling this. Has she not been handling this?

She does not invite him to her fifteenth birthday party. It’s early December and she has spent _weeks_ convincing her parents to let her have a party at the lake house and she is _not_ about to allow weirdos on her property. 

He shows up anyway. She isn’t surprised. A lot of uninvited guests have appeared, and Donna is having her hands _full_ keeping them out of the hot tub and the upstairs bathrooms. Leslie’s trying valiantly to help, but since Leslie is the size of a thimble and the majority of older kids know her only as “that blonde pain in the ass,” she is not proving effective at crowd control.

“Elgin!” Donna yells up the stairs. “Do your work!” If Donna’s parents are going to trust her enough to have only her cousin for adult supervision, he _damn_ well better supervise in a way that isn’t just laying eyes on the few girls who are _almost_ eighteen.

However. It is, on the whole, an _excellent_ party. Donna accepts a virgin daiquiri from Ann’s friend Justin—hmm, now, that boy might have potential—and surveys the living room. Things are going well now. They are humming. Andy, self-appointed DJ, has just put on “Ice Ice Baby,” and Donna slides into a clear spot on the floor, ready to _work it_.

Immediately, the Q-Tip accosts her. “All right!” he says. “Listen, beautiful, let's cut the bull, alright? You want this. I definitely want this.” 

Donna folds her arms across her chest. “I do not want this.” All she wants now is birthday cake, which is her favorite.

He ignores her. “Donna. Baby. We’re already on the dance floor. I’ma dagger you. Just bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, now all the ladies sayin', bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce. What do you say, sexy?”

She says nothing.

He falters slightly, but perks back up. And then he starts _rapping at her_.

“If there’s a problem, yo, I’ll solve it—check out the hook while my DJ revolves it around and—”

Idiot. He can’t even end someone else’s rap on the rhyme?

She sighs, and pokes a finger into his chest. “Listen.” 

“I’m all ears, baby.”

“I hate you.” 

“That ain’t what your body said last summer—”

That’s it. Is Ann around? No. Still monitoring the hot tub with Leslie, she supposes. Which is good. She knows Ann isn’t dating the kid, but this still has the potential to get awkward. Donna raises a hand to silence J.R., then spins on her heel, strides into the kitchen, and grabs Justin by the upper arm.

“You,” she says. “Seven minutes in heaven. Now.”

Justin looks confused, and slightly terrified, but he goes into the closet with her, and within seconds of the door slamming shut, he is participating. _Enthusiastically._ He has less potential than she’d hoped, but this does solve her J.R. problem nicely.

For a week.

Until it’s obvious that she is not, in fact, going out with Justin—who is disappointed, but handles it like a man.

Except for the part where he seems to have informed J.R. that he and Donna are not a _thing_. Because she opens the door on Tuesday and there stands the Q-Tip.

“Donna. Baby! I’m not gonna quit, you know that.”

“Shut up,” she says, and she knocks him into a locker on her way out of the ladies’ room.


	17. Deleted scene #4: "Park Clean-Up"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during Part 2 of the epilogue. Additional Leslie perspective.

“Maybe it’s my haircut. Ann, do you think it’s my haircut?” 

On the other end of the line, Ann sighs, for probably the millionth time in the past month. “No, Leslie, I don’t think your haircut has anything to do with it.”

“But guys like longer hair.”

“Where’d you get that?” 

“ _Cosmo_. I read some of your magazines while we were in Partridge.” 

“Oh, my god.” Another sigh crackles through the phone. “What have I told you about the dating advice in these magazines?” 

Now it’s Leslie’s turn to sigh. “I know, I know. I found that out for myself, remember?” She stretches out the phone cord, releases it, watches it snap back into its usual coil. Her hair used to do that, before she cut it all off, which she now regrets doing, because she’s pretty sure Ben used to like her hair.

“I don’t think it’s your hair. Look, Les, I know I’ve said this a million times, but you just have to give him _time_. He’s depressed right now. He’ll snap out of it. And when he does…”

“I still think he’d be less depressed if he was making out with me.”

“Yeah, he probably would be.” Ann, beautiful unwashed panda bear Ann, still somehow manages to retain a note of sympathy even though they’ve had this conversation every night for the past month or so. “But you can’t force it. You just have to keep being awesome. He’ll come around.” 

Leslie takes a deep breath. 

_Keep being awesome._ She can do that. Right? Right. Until Ben snaps out of it. Which she hopes happens soon, because it’s May already, and what if he doesn’t snap out of it before they both leave for college? Tonight, at least, she manages not to repeat that fear to Ann for the millionth time. It’s just so _frustrating_.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Ann asks, snapping Leslie’s train of thought. “There’s a band practice after lunch. You should come.” 

“Yeah, maybe.” Leslie instantly vows to extend lunch for as long as humanly possible. “If we’re done by then.” 

“Done with what? With picking up trash at the park? You’re always done by—wait a minute, you said ‘we.’” 

She lets that one sink in. 

“You convinced Ben to pick up trash with you at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning?” Ann sounds incredulous. 

Leslie groans. She can’t help it. “I didn’t _have_ to convince him. I just mentioned it casually—”

Ann snorts. 

“I’m serious! I mentioned it casually, like, I just said that’s what I was doing on Saturday—that’s seriously all I said—and he _volunteered_. He asked if I wanted any help.”

“Oh, my _god_.” Now Ann’s groaning too. “Okay. He’s got it bad. If he doesn’t snap out of it by the end of the month, I’m gonna yell at him for you.” 

“If I don’t jump him first,” she mutters. 

“Just remember why we went to Partridge in the first place.”

It’s become Leslie’s mantra over the past month, a constant refrain to keep herself from putting too much pressure on Ben. Because she truly doesn’t want to pressure him. She saw the news reports and read the papers and watched him fight his way through all those angry mobs. She saw how distant and cold his father had been, bristled when Ben had confessed his very best friends wouldn’t take his calls. And—the part she’d never told Ann, who’d slept through the whole thing—she’d let Ben cry himself to sleep on her shoulder, that first night. 

Which has, in the long run, turned out to be the source of a lot of her internal conflict. Not that she wants Ben to cry again; of course she doesn’t want that. However, that night proved a very, very thorough reminder of how it feels to touch him, have him pressed up against her, and _that_ —that she wants very much indeed. Along with all those other things that would accompany having Ben pressed up against her. Namely, hand-holding and making out. 

She really, really, wants the making out part to happen. Like, now. Or yesterday. Or several weeks ago. 

But no pressure. 

So instead of sneaking out the back door, driving to the Dwyers’, and breaking into the basement to proclaim her feelings, she sighs and stares at her toenails. Is it time to repaint them? Maybe. 

“Because Ben needed a friend.” 

“Exactly.” 

The mantra does not stop Leslie, the next morning, from donning a slightly lower-cut top than she would normally wear to go pick up trash in Ramsett Park. 

Ben shows up right on time, and picks up a couple of trash bags from the supplies table. “So, uh,” he asks, looking around uncertainly, “are we the only people here under the age of forty?” 

“Nope,” she replies. Today is a perfect spring day—bright, sunny—oh, crap, did she put on enough sunscreen? She hopes so. Well, there’s more in her fanny pack if she needs it, along with band-aids and ballpoint pens and two pairs of cotton work gloves that she’d grabbed out of the garage this morning. “I mean, we shouldn’t be. A bunch of kids from high school are supposed to be here. Volunteering is mandatory for graduation.” 

“That’s counterintuitive.” 

“They’re always late, though,” Leslie continues. “Come on. We should claim the best spot. Also, don’t talk to any of the adults. They’re all weird.” This is true, even if—well, even if her real motivation is to get Ben to go off alone with her. She starts pointing out some of the regulars. “We don’t want to be anywhere near that woman. Every time she finds food sitting around, she eats it. Then she complains about being sick. And that guy—we don’t want to be around him either. He—” 

Ben, squinting in the sunlight, raises one hand to use as a visor. “I know that guy. His bird flew away.” 

“Are your eyes okay? Don’t you have sunglasses?” 

“I left them in Minnesota.” 

“You should get new ones. For safety, you know, when you’re driving.” 

He shakes his head, and points at another volunteer. “And that guy. He—he lost a cat? Turnip.” Most of the volunteers are scouting around bushes and benches. Not to pick up trash, Leslie knows. Nearly everyone is really just here to poke around in the undergrowth for cats and birds and sandwiches. 

“How do you know that?” 

“Ron’s been making me work the permits desk. And go to public forums. They’re kind of odd.” 

She grins. “They’re great, though, right? I usually go, but they keep getting scheduled for weekdays, when I’m in school.” 

He shrugs. “People here are really...engaged? I guess it’s kind of nice to see.” With a slight shudder, he starts walking away from the main group, slouching a little, like he’s hoping not to be recognized. “No one in Partridge ever got that excited about missing pets.” Ben’s taking longer strides than usual, and she has to jog a little to keep up. He’s also going in totally the wrong direction. Crap. Should she—yeah, she should. 

“This way,” Leslie says, giving him a gentle tug on the arm. “We’re going towards those trees.” She lets go of his arm quickly, but tries to keep her hand in that general area, in case he wants to hold it, or…he doesn’t. Well, that’s fine. Isn’t it? 

She forges ahead, willing herself to stare at the trees. 

It’s really not fine. 

They’re almost at the beech grove when Leslie becomes aware that she is babbling, insanely, about how trash in the park is going to be worse today than it usually is, because the Little League teams held their candy bar sales fundraiser this past week, and everybody just eats the candy bars in the park and they leave half-eaten candy everywhere, and they leave wrappers everywhere, which is bad news, because has Ben ever seen a raccoon on a sugar buzz? Crap. Why is she talking about raccoons? No one wants to hear that. She shuts up at once. 

“So, uh, here we are,” she announces, gesturing at the beeches. She turns around. Ben looks like he’s thinking really hard, although what there is to think about, she has no idea. Moving on. “Where’s all the trash?” she mutters, mostly to herself, and when she finally spots a candy wrapper under the nearest tree, she goes for it. 

“Are these the trees you planted?” 

Leslie grabs the wrapper with more force than she meant to, and winds up with her thumb in a smear of melted chocolate. “Huh?”

“Your environmentalist club. From ninth grade. You planted trees.” 

“Yeah, we did,” she agrees.

“You wrote me a letter about it. About planting beech trees to deter raccoons.”

“I did?” She did, didn’t she? She did. It was one of the first letters she’d sent him after camp ended. And he remembered it? In detail? Crap on a cutting board, she can’t throw this wrapper away; Ben’s got the trash bags and Leslie’s pretty sure that if she stands any closer to him, her _no pressure_ resolve is going to crumble. 

And now Ben looks embarrassed, and he’s scanning the ground for more candy wrappers instead of looking at her. “Yeah,” he mutters. Then he holds out one of the bags. “Here.” 

She grabs wildly for it without looking, with her right hand because she’s right-handed, but her right hand is the one with the wrapper in it. This results in Ben getting melted chocolate on _his_ thumb, too. 

“Sorry! I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay. It’s just chocolate.” 

Leslie suddenly remembers that she brought work gloves, and pulls them out of her fanny pack. “Here, I should’ve given you these before.” She’s about to say “sorry” a third time, but stops herself. 

Cotton gloves aren’t the most effective at wiping off chocolate, but they’re better than nothing, and Leslie’s thumb is mostly clean by the time she pulls the gloves on. Ben only gets as far as wiping his thumb, though. 

“You’re not going to wear those? I brought them for you.” Is it because they have little yellow flowers on them? If only her mother had more masculine gardening attire. If only she—crap. Her mother’s gardening gloves, Leslie realizes, are hardly something she should loan the guy she wants to make out with.

“I don’t think they’re going to fit,” he says, running his thumb over the label, which clearly identifies the gloves as a ladies’ small. “My hands are bigger than yours.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Leslie agrees, trying her best to sound casual. “Ha. I didn’t even think about that.” She’s not sure she’s sounding very casual.

“Well, I appreciate the thought.” He hands the gloves back to her, and she stuffs them in her fanny pack, and they get on with the trash cleanup.

Except _now_ Leslie can’t stop staring at his hands. Not while they’re searching for more candy wrappers, not when he scratches his head while asking her questions about her environmentalist club, not when she insists on being the one to pick up the smashed beer bottles since she is, after all, the only one wearing gloves. 

Not later when they’re eating lunch at JJ’s, when Leslie finally can’t take it anymore and decides to make one last attempt for the day. 

But no pressure. 

She leans across the table and stretches out an arm. “I’m gonna steal a fry,” she announces. 

Ben just shrugs. “Take all you want.” And his hands stay where they were—left one on the tabletop by the napkin dispenser, right one on the remaining wedge of his club sandwich. 

But she thinks she sees his knuckles twitch, reflexively, when she dips her stolen fry in the ketchup. Like he’s having to make an effort _not_ to move his hands. 

And he’s _definitely_ having to make an effort not to look down her shirt. 

Crap on a napkin ring. 

The same thing happens the next Saturday, except she hands him a pair of appropriately-sized, non-flowery gardening gloves she’d picked up earlier in the week. 

Ben smiles and pulls something out of his back pocket—an ancient, beat-up pair of leather work gloves. “You didn’t have to do that. I found these in the Dwyers’ garage.”

“Oh,” she says. “Okay. Cool.” The leather gloves are enormous on Ben, of course, since the Dwyers are all three times his size, but they get the job done. 

She hangs on to the other gloves. Just in case. 

On the Saturday after that, park cleanup gets canceled due to rain, so they retreat to JJ’s for an extended weekend brunch, where Ben does not attempt to stop Leslie from sticking her fork in his hash browns. That causes her to cancel their tentative afternoon plans, which causes him to look vaguely hurt, which causes _her_ to feel terrible—but she just can’t take it anymore. She can’t take being around him without touching, or kissing, or saying something.

But no pressure, right?

Right.

No pressure. 

Because she knows from Ann, via Andy, that Ben still spends most of his free time alone in the basement, not sleeping; that Andy had to literally fight Ben in order to get him to talk about anything (and okay, she touched Ben’s hair after that happened, an instinctual move she couldn’t keep herself from making). She knows that there’s stuff going on in Partridge still that he can’t or won’t tell her about, and that is _killing_ her, because if he would just tell her then she could _help_. 

She makes it through another week without either jumping him or demanding that he tell her everything about what’s wrong—because come on, she knows she’s going through a rough patch. Didn’t she drive to Minnesota for him? Didn’t she bring him back to Pawnee? Doesn’t that prove she doesn’t _care_ about all the bad things that happened? 

Thank goodness she has Ann, because even though it’s Friday night and Leslie is aware that she should probably be out, doing something, she really needs to vent. 

Except that this evening, Ann isn’t home, and when Leslie finally tracks her down, she’s at Andy’s and she’s drunk. 

“Why are you doing that?” Leslie demands. It sounds like whining, even to her. “You’re not old enough to drink, Ann. What if someone finds out? You could be destroying your future.” And Andy’s brother’s future, or whoever it is that’s buying for them, and her liver, Ann could be destroying her liver, and what if they’re dumb enough to _drive_? Ann wouldn’t be, Ann’s smarter than that, but putting Andy behind the wheel of a car is terrifying even on his best days, and if he’s so much as smelled alcohol, well…

Plus, it’s impossible to talk to Ann when she’s like this.

“Oh, my god, Les.” Ann’s voice is slurred, a little, which is super annoying. “It’s _fine_. We’re just having fun. No one knows.”

“ _I_ know.”

“So what? Are you gonna tell on me?”

“No,” Leslie sighs. “This is just—this is really bad timing, Ann, I need to talk to you about—”

“For the millionth repetition,” Ann spits out, “just give Ben time, Leslie. And space.”

“I’ve given him time and space! I’ve given him so much time, Ann.”

She drags out a groan. “To you, it seems like a lot of time. He’s still really depressed. Maybe he doesn’t think it’s been a lot of time.”

“Maybe we should have this conversation when you’re not drunk.” 

“Maybe we shouldn’t have this conversation at all,” Ann says, with a loud huff. “Again. Maybe we should stop having this same conversation again every night, Leslie.”

Leslie knows she shouldn’t be trying to reason with Ann, not when Ann’s like this, but just…damn it. “But why hasn’t he tried to kiss me yet?” she pleads. “Wouldn’t he be less depressed if we were making out? I’m really good at making out, Ann!” And Ben _knows that_ , she knows he knows that, because they used to do it all the time…

“Well, why don’t you ask him that, if you want to know so badly?”

“You just told me to give him space!” Leslie snaps. 

“Damn it, Leslie! I don’t freaking know, okay? Here’s what I know. I’m gonna tell you what I know. I know Ben’s depressed because he thinks he’s like…broken or something. I know you want to make out with him, because you’ve told me that practically every freaking night since you dragged me to freaking Minnesota. And I know Ben is really dumb. And I’m like a hundred percent sure he still likes you, which is really freaking weird, by the way, that you guys have like kept up like a _thing_ for all this time, or whatever.” She pauses, which probably means she’s taking another drink. “And you know what I really don’t know? I don’t know what you want me to tell you, because we have this conversation like fifteen times a week, and I’m kind of sick of it, Leslie.” She ends with a small hiccup, and Leslie feels the bile rise in her throat.

“I don’t know why I listen to you sometimes,” she says. “Not when you’re drunk.” And she hangs up.

Leslie spends the rest of the evening in a terrible snit. She tries to read a book, but she can’t concentrate, and she ends up driving herself to the grocery store for Oreos and snapping at her mother, when her mother asks _isn’t Leslie going to do something with Ann tonight_. 

“No, because Ann’s being stupid,” she replies, horribly aware that she sounds like she’s five years old.

When she wakes up in the morning, an embarrassing percentage of the Oreos are gone, and she has to take several deep breaths before she gets out of bed.

Leslie did not go to Minnesota because she wanted a boyfriend. She went to Minnesota because Ben, who is her friend, needed help. She values being a friend over being a girlfriend; of course she does. 

She puts on a low-cut shirt anyway, grabs her gardening gloves, and heads to Ramsett Park.

***

Miraculously, Ben slept last night. He slept _really_ well last night, in fact. This was no thanks to Andy, who’d attempted to keep him up all night. First it was for video games, and then, when Ben finally agreed that he was never going to be able to rent a tuxedo at ten o’clock on a Friday night and he should probably stop trying, Andy had insisted on bestowing all his accumulated asking-a-girl-out wisdom on Ben. 

The sum total of this advice had been “You know, I never told Ann I liked her or anything. Didn’t have to. I just let my body do the talking.” Andy’s subsequent “body talking” demonstration had been either an impersonation of Steven Tyler or Jim Morrison, Ben’s still not sure which. 

“Thanks, Andy,” he’d said, “but I think I’ll stick to normal talking.” 

And so far, this morning, everything is going to plan. He’s at the park before Leslie, which is a miracle, and he’s got the éclairs (he’s not even sure _why_ éclairs, they just seemed more…prom-like than donuts), and he’s got a bunch of half-rehearsed speeches in his head, which he figures he can expand upon extemporaneously (he’s good at speaking extemporaneously, or at least he used to be), when he sees her and decides which one he wants to give. 

So all he has to do now is sit in his car and wait for her. 

_Leslie, your friendship is the most important thing in the world to me, but it’s not enough anymore, so…_ He’s a little worried about that one, because of her proclivity to interrupt. What if she gets the wrong idea, and butts in before he gets to the part about wanting more? He’s not nervous about rejection after all that Ann said, not in the slightest—but it would be really great if this could go smoothly, is all. 

_Leslie, would you do me the honor of being my prom date…at your prom?_ No. Ann had just said to ask her to the prom, and he trusts Ann, but that sounds weird to him no matter what, like he’s inviting himself to her prom or something. And maybe technically he is, but he doesn’t mean it like that. 

The inside of his car is too hot. What if the éclairs melt? He grabs the box and moves to the outside of the car, perching on the hood in a manner that he hopes isn’t too ridiculous—if there’s one thing Ben knows he isn’t, it’s James Dean, and he shouldn’t even try to be.

_Pawnee is a very special town…_ But he’s asking her to go on a _date_ , not on one of the recreational historic walking tours. She’s already _been_ on all the recreational historic walking tours. Multiple times. Okay, so Leslie probably would like to be asked out in a way that sounds like she’s being asked to go on a historic walking tour, but he was really hoping to achieve something a little less dorky and a little more romantic, if that’s at all possible. 

He’s still thinking through his options when she pulls into the parking lot, and he’s still thinking through them when she gets out of her car and walks over to his, and he’s still thinking through them when her eyes flicker to the bakery box. 

But then the light catches her hair, and she smiles, and says “Hi! You’re here early,” with all her usual brightness, and all his thoughts and half-rehearsed speeches fly out the window.

Screw it. He’s just going to kiss her. 

Ben lets the box slip from his fingers as he slides off the hood of his car. Leslie’s only one step away from him now, a single step, and closing that distance is the easiest thing he’s ever done. 

Leslie emits a tiny gasp, half a breath, before he gets there—and then she’s _clutching_ at him, arms around his waist, pulling him closer, like she never wants to let go.

The first words out of her mouth are irritated and impatient. “ _Finally_ ,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for you to do that for _weeks_.” 

If there was any tension left, any anxiety, that breaks it. “Just weeks?” She’s smiling and he’s smiling and this is so easy, being with Leslie, that he feels lightheaded. “I’ve been waiting to do it for four years.”


	18. Deleted scene #5: "Twentieth-Century U.S. History"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie POV, set during Part 1 of the epilogue.

If anyone—if _Ann_ —was to have asked Leslie how, exactly, she'd ended up in the back of Andy's friend Burly's van, dressed entirely in black, with an adequate but not excessive supply of candy necklaces, well, Leslie wouldn't have quite been able to explain. She can't quite explain it to herself, to be perfectly honest. Why _had_ this seemed like such a good idea, hanging out in the parking lot at Patterson Central High, waiting to see if Ann emerges from the Pawnee team's locker room with Pistol Pete?

Ann's boyfriends are none of her business, she knows that.

Except that they are. Ann keeps making mistakes, big mistakes, and she keeps getting her heart broken, and she is Leslie's best friend in the whole world. And that means Ann's potential suitors are absolutely something Leslie needs to be concerned with. _Keep your friends close and your enemies closer_ , that's her motto—okay, Andy isn't exactly her enemy. But he _does_ keep trying to get with Ann, and he's no good for her. He's great…in a way…but he doesn't even have _college plans_ , and they're _juniors_ now. Andy hasn't even taken the SATs! 

No, Ann deserves better than that, and Leslie figures it's in everyone's best interests if she keeps them separated as much as possible. But Ann might also deserve better than Pete, in whom she had only just that morning expressed interest. “He's tall, and he’s kind of cute,” Ann had said, followed immediately by, “Leslie, for god's sake, don't—this doesn't mean anything. I've never even talked to him.”

But Pete. Once Pete notices Ann, how is he not going to want to go out with her? Anyone would. Andy certainly does. Again. Still? Leslie's lost track of how many times Ann and Andy have gotten together and broken up. She has it written down somewhere in her room, but right now—four candy necklaces into the stakeout—the exact number is eluding her. 

This particular attempt at espionage is not going well. For one thing, they're out here way too early; the game is still in the first quarter, and since Pete is the star of the team, he's hardly going to be leaving any time soon. Maybe she should've waited?

And it's freezing. It's the middle of January and it's freezing. 

Plus, Andy’s playing guitar in the back seat, and all the black sneaking-around outfits in the world can't muffle that racket. Just because “I Will Always Love You” is the most popular song of ever right now, and just because Ann secretly loves it and sings it into her hairbrush every night (of course Ann, beautiful nightingale Ann, has the most amazing singing voice), which Andy knows—well, just because those things are true doesn't mean that Ann will be impressed if Andy learns all the words and turns it into a grunge anthem. Those things don’t mean that she, Leslie, should have to suffer through his horrible attempts to do so. 

She bites into her fifth candy necklace, chews, and wonders if she would have been better off inside, showing school spirit. How is she going to do a great morning announcement about the Pawnee-Patterson rivalry game if she didn’t see it?

Crap. This is the worst stakeout in the history of Indiana, possibly the United States, maybe even the world. 

A loud knock reverberates against the sliding door window, causing Leslie to jump several inches. 

“Hello?” calls a male voice, deep and uncertain.

“Andy, shut up!” Leslie hisses, but Andy can't hear her, of course, and takes her frantic gestures as a request to sing louder. 

“Is everything all right in there?” asks the voice. “I have to warn you, I am in Junior ROTC, and I do not believe in cruelty to animals, so if you are doing what I think you are doing—”

Junior ROTC? Well, at least it's just a kid. Leslie throws the sliding door open. 

“What do you think we're doing?”

“Oh,” says the voice, which belongs to a large red-headed boy. “I'm sorry, miss. Ma'am. I, uh, I thought you might be strangling a cat.”

“Andy!” Leslie wails. “Stop. Now.”

“What is it?” Andy's head emerges from the back of the van. “Is that Ann? Did she show up?”

“No. This guy did.” The guy, whoever he is, is standing in front of a flood light, and Leslie squints, trying to make out his face. “Uh, who are you?”

“Dave Sanderson,” he says, sticking out an enormous hand for Leslie and Andy to shake.

“You must be from Patterson.” That’s the only explanation. She can make out his face, now, and it’s not one she’s ever seen before. And she knows pretty much everyone in her own school. “The enemy.”

“What? No, no, I'm not.” He unzips the top of his coat to reveal a brand-new Pawnee sweatshirt, at which he points. “Just moved to Pawnee. This is my first week in Indiana, in fact. Got lost on my way to the—you know what, those details are not relevant to this particular situation. I'll leave you two alone. Have a good evening.” 

Leslie shivers inside her black coat, black sweatshirt, and black scarf, and makes a snap decision. Inside, where both Ann and Pete are right now, is warm. And out here is not warm. And Ann might not have eaten all her popcorn yet.

“Hang on,” she says, scrambling out of the van after Dave. “I'm going in too. I’ll come with you. Andy, are you coming?”

Andy's reply, coming as it does through a mouthful of eight candy necklaces, is unintelligible. But he jumps out of the van, and starts walking towards the gym with them. 

“Candy necklace?” She offers one to Dave, who shakes his head. “Oh, right. Hi. I'm Leslie. That's Andy. We're from Pawnee too.” 

Andy trips on a nearby traffic cone, chokes, and spits half-chewed candy necklace all over Leslie's head. 

“It's nice to meet you, Leslie,” says Dave, shaking her hand again, as though he hadn't just shook it two minutes ago. “You, uh, have some candy in your hair.” 

“Damn it, Andy,” she mutters, although this might not have been entirely Andy's fault, even if he had just spit on her. She might have gotten candy in her own hair; it wouldn’t be the first time for that. This one doesn’t want to come out, either. How did a candy necklace get so sticky, anyway? Why won't it come loose? 

Dave clears his throat. “What's the occasion for the, er, the necklaces?” he asks “You have quite the assortment around your neck there, I noticed.” 

“No occasion,” Leslie says, with a shrug. “I just like candy.”

It’s not until Leslie’s gotten inside, found Ann, convinced everyone sitting near Ann to scoot over so they can sit with her, chastised Ann for not saving them seats, and unwrapped a sixth candy necklace that she realizes the red-haired kid is still with them. 

“Oh, right,” she says, gesturing. “Ann, Dave. He’s new. Dave, this is Ann Perkins, my best friend.”

Dave extends his enormous hand again. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Hi,” Ann says, throwing Leslie a puzzled look.

“I’ll explain later,” she mutters.

Then she looks up and notices the scoreboard. Patterson Central is leading by 29 points, and it’s not even halftime yet. 

“No,” Leslie breathes, just before her jaw clenches. What the hell is wrong with her team? “No, no, no, no, no—”

“Okay then,” says Dave, to no one in particular.

***

On Monday, when school starts again, Leslie discovers that Ann is in fact going out with Pete. Or will be, next weekend. 

“Want me to set you up?” she offers, at lunch. “It can be a double date. There’s a guy I went to middle school with, he wound up going to Wamapoke County Day—” 

Leslie frowns at her meatloaf. “That’s in Eagleton. You know I can’t go out with anyone who goes to school in Eagleton.” 

Ann shrugs. “Suit yourself.” 

And then Ann and Donna get wrapped up in a conversation about makeup or something, which Leslie mostly ignores. Poking her meatloaf with her fork seems more interesting. 

She leaves the cafeteria in a terrible mood, but brightens as she heads towards her first afternoon class, because it’s U.S. History, and how could that be anything but great? It will be great. She makes it to the classroom before anyone else, even the teacher, and picks the best seat, right at the front. 

The door opens just as she’s arranging her backup pencils beside her open textbook and her fresh loose-leaf notebook paper. 

“Oh, hi. Hi, Leslie.” 

She looks up. It’s that red-haired kid again. “Hi,” she says. “How’s your first day going?” 

“Fine. I guess it’s been fine.” 

“That’s good.” 

“Would you mind if I sat?” Dave asks. “Here,” he continues, rather unnecessarily. “In this chair. Next to you.” 

“Yeah, okay. I mean, sure. Of course you can sit there.” 

Dave arranges himself in the next chair and then glances at her open book. “Who’s that lady?” he asks, pointing at a large picture of the 1976 Democratic National Convention. 

“Barbara Jordan.” 

“Is she related to…” 

_Please don’t let him say anything about basketball_.

He does. And then he clears his throat fourteen times during class (she counts). 

He’s never heard of _Minor vs. Happersett_ either, and doesn’t seem to understand why it’s relevant to twentieth-century U.S. history.

Oh, god, it’s going to be a long year. 

***

On Wednesday, Leslie gets so wrapped up in talking to her Model UN coach about the upcoming conference schedule that she misses the late bus and has to walk home. And it’s snowing. Great. 

Her house is only a mile away, but by the time she gets there, her feet are soaking wet and frozen solid. She throws open the mailbox flap with the loudest bang she can muster (it isn’t very loud at all) grabs the mail, and flips through the box’s contents, making faces at everything—the grocery store ad and a bunch of things for her mom that look like they’re from the bank and the Pawnee Pennysaver and what is clearly a birthday card from Minnesota—

Birthday card from Minnesota.

Leslie tucks that particular envelope into her coat pocket, discards her shoes in the mud room, leaves her coat on until after she’s made herself a giant mug of hot chocolate, and then sprints upstairs with her goods before her mom can ask why she’s still wearing her winter coat in the house. Is her mom even home from work yet? She isn’t sure. Except if her mom was home, she would have gotten the mail, so that means Leslie’s alone and it’s hot in the house and she should take her coat off. Which she does. As soon as she’s safely in her room with the door locked. 

_Dear Leslie,_

_Happy 17th.Hope it’s a good one. See, I’m on time this year (I hope)._

_Ben_

_P.S. I’m still waiting to hear your opinions on the presidential election. What gives, Knope? I thought there’d be a ten-page paper in my mailbox before last Thanksgiving._

That’s it? It’s something, but that—that’s it?

God, he sounds like such a—such a _boy_ , all of a sudden. Or maybe not all of a sudden. She hasn’t even heard from Ben in months, not since he thanked her for the birthday card she’d sent for his seventeenth, and the selection of Pawnee-themed keychains since he’d finally reached driving age in Minnesota (she still can’t imagine what she would have done if she’d had to wait a whole extra year to be old enough to drive…)

No Christmas card, even, this year. 

When she’s done re-reading the birthday card, she tucks it into her folder of all Ben correspondence, which she keeps in the back of her closet along with her summer camp scrapbook, the papier-mâché light saber Ben made her, and the “Minnesota trip” secret shoebox fund. The shoebox seems a bit silly to her at the moment. Should she put that money in the bank? She should probably put that money in the bank. When exactly does she think she’s going to go to Minnesota, anyway?

For no reason at all, she pulls out the scrapbook. Then she leans back against her piles of bed pillows and slowly flips through the album, sipping her hot chocolate, wondering how two—no, almost three years—can seem like such a long time ago and, at the same time, like it was just yesterday. 

Though clearly it was a really long time ago—look at how _short_ she was back then. She wonders how much taller Ben might be by now, and what he looks like with the braces off and no glasses, but can’t quite grasp the image. Even now, sitting here with photo evidence in front of her, she can’t get a handle on what he looked like _then_ , not the whole of him. She can only recall fragments, here and there—what seems like one specific walk around the lake, but might have been twelve walks around the lake, because the exact plaid of his shirt keeps changing. Or a night in the boys’ cabin, up in the bunk beds, but she can’t remember if they were discussing the Olympiad or baseball or whether Ron and Tammy were still not-so-secretly doing gross things in the bathroom after hours. 

Well, if nothing else, she’s grateful he still thinks about her enough to remember her birthday. It’s always nice to hear from an old friend.

Why does he have to live in Minnesota, again? 

And she knows he was joking about the election…but she _does_ have extra copies of her school paper editorial about it…the longer version, the one the editor claimed they couldn’t print because a fifteen-page editorial would have taken up seventy-five percent of the paper. 

Her desk is a mess, but she knows exactly where the extra copies of her editorial are. 

But he was joking. Mostly. So she doesn’t mail one. 

***

On Wednesday, Leslie hasn’t even managed to sit down at lunch before Ann starts in on Dave again. 

“Leslie, I think he likes you.”

Instantly, Leslie feels her post-inauguration buzz start to dissipate. She’s starving, because she skipped most of lunch to watch Clinton’s swearing-in and inaugural address on the front office television, but that didn’t matter…until she reluctantly had to leave the brilliant, glittering world of Washington politics and return to the much duller world of high school, which smells a lot like wet raccoons. Washington probably doesn’t smell like wet raccoons, she thinks, and it almost certainly doesn’t care this much about whether you have a boyfriend.

In the much duller world of high school, being starving makes Leslie cranky. 

She tosses yet another annoyed, sidelong glance at Ann, and bangs her lunch tray on the table a little too hard, which earns her a sharp _“Watch it”_ from Donna. 

“You said that about Brian,” Leslie points out. “And Matt. And the other Matt. And—” And all of those other guys, the ones who dumped Leslie before the first date was even over. At this rate, she’s going to wind up going to junior prom with the Gerbil. Ew. She adds _men’s spray-on deodorant_ and _men’s cologne_ to her mental pre-prom checklist, and resolves to write them down on her real pre-prom checklist once she gets home. 

(And, of course, after she watches Clinton’s inauguration again, because she’s got the whole afternoon of television coverage taping on the VCR at home, and she can’t wait to watch _everything_. Again. Because the inauguration is way more interesting than junior prom.) 

“Fine,” says Ann, returning the annoyed glance. “So don’t go out with Dave, who clearly likes you, because _he asked you to tutor him in history, Leslie_.”

“That’s not because he _likes_ me, Ann. He hasn’t asked me out—”

“Not _yet_ ,” Donna interjects. “That boy’s not much of a talker.” 

“And he didn’t ask me to tutor him. Although he should. He’s _terrible_ at history. He just asks me a million questions after every class.”

“You’re probably being unfair,” Ann says, as she pops open her Snapple. “One, he’s only been here for, like, two weeks. Two, everyone is terrible at history compared to you.”

Okay, so Ann’s point about history is probably true. But Leslie’s still about to open her mouth to argue about whether or not Dave likes her when Donna spreads her hands across the table, which has an uncanny silencing effect. 

“Invite Dave to your birthday party,” she declares. “Or that Chris guy from Ann’s biology class.” 

Ann perks up at that, but Leslie groans. “Why do I have to date _anyone_?” 

“You don’t,” Ann says, with a shrug. “But why wouldn’t you want to?”

“Because if the choice is between having a crappy boyfriend and having no boyfriend, I’d rather have no boyfriend.”

Ann makes a face. “Les, you can’t decide they’re going to be crappy boyfriends before you go out with them.”

Leslie doesn’t respond. Instead, she lets her gaze stray across the cafeteria and land on the recently svelte Lindsay, who returned from winter break with suspicious raccoon-like bruises under both eyes and a bandage on her nose, and immediately circulated a rumor (through Joan) that her “deviated septum” had been “realigned.” The bandage is gone now, and the bruises are starting to fade, and…damn it, Lindsay. They haven’t even spoken in a full year, and it’s still all Leslie can do to keep from running over, shaking her, and yelling _But there wasn’t anything wrong with you before_. There’s plenty wrong with Lindsay now, though. Like…everything. 

And Ann is still great, she’s still Leslie’s absolute best friend in the world, but…but Ann didn’t own a Pacers sweatshirt before her first date with Pete, and she’s worn it three days in a row now. 

Why does everything have to be so complicated? Why can’t she just go home and watch the inauguration a million more times and not think about boys at all?

She doesn’t have an answer. Not here at lunch, and not when she gets to U.S. History, where Dave sits next to her without asking, awkwardly says hello without looking at her, and proceeds to correctly answer several questions about the Nineteenth Amendment. 

Huh. 

She catches up with him in the hallway afterwards, jogging slightly to keep up, since he’s so tall. 

“Hey. Dave.” Is this casual? She hopes she’s being casual, because she means this in a _friend_ way, not an _I like you_ way. “My birthday’s on Saturday. Well, my birthday was Monday, but the party is Saturday. At Donna’s. You should come.” 

It’s hard to tell, but she thinks he turns pink under his freckles.

“I would like to do that,” he replies. 

“Okay, great. I’ll give you directions tomorrow—”

“I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

“Of course you didn’t. I didn’t tell you, and we didn’t have school on Monday because it was Martin Luther King Day, so…”

Dave frowns. “Well, if I’d known, I would’ve…said something. I guess I could say it now.”

“Sure,” Leslie replies. Where’s he going with this, exactly?

“Happy birthday, Leslie.”

The bell rings. Crap, she’s going to be late for English now. She breaks into a half-jog, and calls “Thanks!” over her shoulder as she speeds down the hall.

Dave, incongruously, gives her half a smile and a tiny wave. 

Later that night, in the time right before sleep when her mind wanders every which way, she wonders how silly she’d look if she tried to date someone as tall as Dave. 

Then she wonders why she would care. 

***

Ann may be the best friend of ever, but she plans and throws the worst parties. Aside from the cake, which is awesome—because Leslie made it herself, exactly how she wanted it—Leslie’s seventeenth birthday party is somehow extraordinarily lame. Possibly because they’re at Donna’s house for “more freedom,” since the Meagles are way less strict than Leslie’s mom, and Ann and Pete have been taking advantage of that freedom. No one’s seen them in an hour. Half the crowd has already started to leave. And half of the people who are still here are people Leslie doesn’t like and certainly didn’t invite, like…Lindsay and Joan and the rest of the super-popular crowd. What are they even doing here? Well, she knows what they’re doing here; word always spreads when there’s a party at the Meagle residence. Donna’s not happy about it either, and keeps throwing pointed, huffy glances at the non-invitees. 

But still. It’s Leslie’s birthday and she’s going to have a good time, damn it. 

Really, if the lame popular people would just leave, the party would be perfect, because then she could bring out the cake. And she can’t do that now, obviously, because Lindsay and Joan and the others are just going to sneer at it, and take pieces without actually eating them. Her birthday cake, Leslie believes, should be appreciated. 

Andy catches her in the hallway and begins desperately explaining what’s wrong with the party. 

“It’s the music,” he explains, wide-eyed. “Leslie, you should’ve hired my band. Ann’s music sucks. My band is awesome.” 

“You finally have a band?”

He nods, vigorously. “Well, not like a full band. I don’t have a bassist or a drummer and technically, I do not have another guitarist at the moment, either, because Burly is mad at me right now.”

“So it’s just you.” She doesn’t even want to know about Burly or why they’re fighting. 

“But I’m awesome!” Andy protests, and Leslie just kind of walks away, in search of soda or chips or cookies or Donna or _something_. 

Birthday, happy time, fun. Damn it. 

When she gets to the kitchen, she finds Dave, still wearing a snow-covered coat and looking extraordinarily out of place. 

“Les—Leslie,” he stutters, holding out a card, which she accepts. 

“Hey. Where’ve you been?” 

Dave takes off the coat, which is dripping melted snow on the kitchen floor, and tosses it on a nearby bar stool. They should probably get the wet coat out of sight, and off the furniture, before Donna turns up…

“I just—I got lost,” he admits. “Still don’t know my way around, really.” 

Leslie opens the card. It’s pretty standard—picture of a cake, a little glitter—but hell, he’s one of the only people who even brought a card, so. “Thanks, Dave.” 

“Happy birthday,” he says, as though he hadn’t said it the other day. 

Impulsively, she gives him a quick, friendly hug. 

He turns bright red, and Leslie hastily suggests that they grab some sodas. 

“Hey!” yells Andy, bouncing into the kitchen. “You. That guy. Dave, right? Awesome to see you again, man.”

“Andy, put Dave’s coat with the other coats, will you?” Leslie hisses, jerking her head towards the back door. She turns back to Dave. “Soda?”

By the time Ann and Pete finally reappear, Leslie, Donna, and a handful of others are clustered in the living room, watching Andy and Dave reenact all three _Lethal Weapon_ movies. It’s not going so well, from a performance standpoint. They keep forgetting which of them is Riggs and which one is Murtaugh, and Dave keeps stopping to correct Andy’s finger gun techniques. The whole thing is pretty stupid, and not at all what Leslie wanted to happen at her birthday party. 

But she’s laughing, and so is everyone else in the living room, and the feeling just seems to keep building, so by the time Ann brings out the cake, Leslie doesn’t even care that Lindsay and Joan are still around, because she feels exhilarated and giddy and maybe even a little drunk. Well, not that she’s ever tasted alcohol, beyond sticking her tongue in the occasional Thanksgiving wine glass when she was a kid and no one was looking. Irresponsible teenage drinking is a real social problem, and she won’t contribute to it. 

So maybe it’s more like a really good sugar high, this feeling; it’s the kind of feeling that keeps her warm even when she’s trekking back to her car in the freezing winter air. 

And maybe it doesn’t hurt that Dave is so concerned with seeing Leslie to her car (how unfair is that, that she still has a super-early curfew for her _birthday party_ ) that he accidentally knocks Lindsay into a wall trying to get to the front door, like he didn’t even notice Lindsay was standing there. 

“I can get back to my car by myself, you know,” she tells Dave. Quite frankly, he’s much worse at scrambling over the icy sidewalks than she is. 

“I know that. But I, uh…I wanted to get a moment alone with you.” 

Suddenly, her comfortable warm feeling isn’t so comfortable. “Dave…”

“I like you,” he states, flatly, “in, you know—I think—I think in the romantical way?” 

“Was that a question?”

“No, I—no. I don’t think I meant it to be.” He takes a deep breath and winces, slightly. Brain freeze, she supposes. “What I meant was, I would like to take you out some time. Like, on a date type of thing. If you would like to do that with me.” 

Huh.

She honestly has no idea, still. Which means there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

“Okay,” she says. “We can do that.” 

“All right then.”

“Okay.”

“That’s good.”

It takes another two minutes to finally say goodbye and get in her car. 

Driving home, expertly swerving just enough on the icy road to avoid a family of raccoons, Leslie wonders if maybe that wasn’t the most auspicious beginning to a potential relationship. 

***

She’s not nervous. She’s not nervous at all. What is there to be nervous about? Dave asked her out; _he’s_ the one who should be nervous. All she has to be nervous about is her mother finding out that this is a date and not just “Dave picking me up to go hang out with Ann and people.” Which is not even a lie, technically. Just, they’re not meeting Ann and Pete until later on. 

There’s absolutely nothing to be nervous about. 

Ten minutes before he’s supposed to pick her up, she almost vomits, which makes her wonder if her breath smells really bad, so she furiously brushes her teeth, just in case. 

At the pizza place, she somehow spills a soda on herself before the waitress has even put it all the way down on the table. When she gets to the bathroom to paper-towel her sweater more thoroughly, she finds a big smear of toothpaste in her hair. 

But Dave is still there when she comes back from the bathroom, and he still looks happy to see her. 

Then he burns his finger on the edge of the pizza pan and knocks over the salt shaker. 

And he doesn’t ask her to shut up when she inadvertently talks about the Iraq disarmament crisis for a good ten minutes. 

When the check comes, he grabs it at once. 

“Halvsies?” she suggests, but Dave shakes his head. 

“Nope.” 

“I’m a feminist.” 

“Does that mean I can’t be nice to you?”

“No, it means I believe in equality.” 

“Okay.” Dave takes a deep breath. “Uh, next time, if you want to do this a next time, you can pay. Is that a deal?” 

“Deal,” Leslie agrees. It’s not until they’re shaking on it, and her hand stays engulfed in his for a moment longer than it maybe should, that she realizes the significance of _next time_. 

***

Next time her mother has somehow figured out the _meeting Ann later at the movies_ ruse, and makes Dave come into the house for the usual interrogation. Leslie hovers just outside the living room, sweating and wondering if _she’s_ going to get a bunch of questions, later, about whether she’s sure he’s smart enough for her. It wouldn’t be the first time…

When she arrives home, her mom asks, “Where’d that one come from?” Then she agrees that Dave is very polite, and doesn’t push the subject further, past her usual “Be careful, darling.” 

*** 

Midway through their third date, Leslie lets Dave kiss her. 

It’s a home basketball game versus Blythe Central, so hardly the most private or quiet place to do anything, but at halftime they go out to Leslie’s car for more candy, and it’s there that Dave makes his move by announcing that he would like to make a move, with her permission. 

“Leslie,” he starts, his voice less steady than usual, “uh, I wanted to tell you that I do think—I mean, I find you attractive, and—”

She’s only half listening, focused as she is on digging out the spare Hershey bars from under the spare sweatshirts in her trunk. “Hmm?”

“So, uh, I would like to kiss you, not necessarily now, although now would be—would be good. But at some point. In the future. Soon.” 

“Oh.” She slams the trunk shut. “Well…yeah, okay.” What a weird…sure, she’s glad he didn’t just try to attack her or anything, but _really_? “Now’s fine, I guess.” 

That was probably not the best thing she could have said, but it seems to have been good enough for Dave, who’s suddenly contorting awkwardly right there in the parking lot, trying to bring his head to her level. 

It doesn’t feel like she expected it to. It doesn’t really feel like anything at all, not at first. But after a second, a single, tiny butterfly starts flapping in the pit of her stomach. 

Of course it doesn’t feel like she expected it to. She hasn’t kissed anyone since summer camp, aside from an awkward encounter with one of Ann’s horrible setups: the guy had swooped in somewhat unexpectedly, Leslie had ducked, and she had later described the end result as _he licked my cheek, Ann_. She’s probably forgotten what kissing feels like. 

Whatever this is, it’s not _bad_. And it’s over quickly. And afterwards, Dave blushes, which is kind of cute. 

They hold hands for most of the second half, and when the game’s over and she’s dropping him off at his house, she lets him kiss her good-bye before he gets out of the car. 

“So I’ll see you soon, right?” 

“Right,” she agrees. 

When Leslie gets home, she tries to call Ann right away, but Ann’s still out with Pete. So she settles for making faces at herself in the mirror, wondering which one would be the best to use in the event that she feels like engaging Dave in more kissing. 

She thinks she might feel like doing that pretty soon.


End file.
